Tagged With "Cholla"

Glad to see you didn't get too close, PHeymont! The needles on most cholla are barbed, like a fish hook. Very painful and difficult to get out once embedded in your skin.

My local friend, who warned me about them, also told me how to get the barbs out...

I bet your friend said to use "fish nose" plyers. The same kind you use to get a deeply swallowed hook out of a fish.

Always worth trying a little tape or dried Elmer's glue over the area. Gently pull and hope for the best. What you really do not want to do is sit on the cacti. Ask me how I know.

Or backing into nettles, bare-skinned in an emergency. Ask me how I know.

Originally Posted by PortMoresby: Or backing into nettles, bare-skinned in an emergency. Ask me how I know. How do you know?

On a hike once, far from the nearest facilities...well, you get the picture. The trouble with nettles is, unlike cholla, the inflictors of the stings are small and not noticeable if one isn't familiar with the plant. Despite the painful meeting of nether parts with plant parts, it took another encounter or 2 before I finally got that those innocuous-looking plants were the ones. Cholla, with which I'm also personally familiar, cannot hold a candle in the pain department to nettles.

As it snows and storms outside, a welcome diversion! I find all cacti interesting but there's something captivating about the saguaro forest around Tucson. While visiting Saguaro National Park (years ago, before it was a national park), I remember a newspaper clipping tacked onto the park's information board. The headline read something like "Saguaro cactus involved in double homocide". Seems a drunk yahoo with a shotgun drove out to the desert to kill himself a giant saguaro. He did, the...

I love to travel in the winter to hot countries - who doesn't ? But apart from the obvious reasons you get access to rare and strange fruit that just doesn't travel well. Star fruit, Custard apples, Salak and Prickly pears ! PRICKLY PEARS Delicious !!

You actually can eat those fruits?

It may seem a little surprising, but yes…it’s food! I always wonder about things like this: Who was the first human desperate enough to try eating a spiny thistle (the one we call an artichoike!)

Spending time in the Tucson area, I've learned to appreciate cacti even more. What amazes me is how many tall saguaro there are because it takes so long for them to grow.

I love the Saguaro forest around Tucson. Especially in the spring when the cacti are in bloom!

  When you see a group of them at a distance in the "Cholla Cactus Garden" (Joshua Tree National Park), they're a memorable site.  With their arms outstretched, these cacti seem rather fuzzy, almost soft, and hence the name "teddy...

 Even a non-artist like me can make you think of the desert with just a few squiggles of a felt-tip marker. See above? I did it already…and what does the trick is that everyone has seen the image forever, even though the cactus in the...