We spent part of our winter in Arizona. The landscaping in our yard is more aptly called hardscaping since it is mostly paving stones and rock. There are a number of green plants – most of them of the prickly variety. Here they are, up close in all their spiny glory.
Golden Barrel Cactus
Fishhook Barrel Cactus
Possibly a type of Hedgehog Cactus
Saguaro Cactus
Prickly Pear Cactus
There is one animal that is not intimidated by the Prickly Pear Cactus. It is the Javelina. It looks much like a Wild Boar, but it isn’t. I haven’t actually seen Javelinas in our yard, but I do know what they dine on – my Prickly Pear Cactus!
He’d always had a quickening of the heart when he crossed into Arizona and beheld the cactus country. This was as the desert should be, this was the desert of the picture books, with the land unrolled to the farthest distant horizon hills, with saguaro standing sentinel in their strange chessboard pattern, towering supinely above the fans of ocotillo and brushy mesquite.
– Dorothy B. Hughes, The Expendable Man –
My goodness, nature sure knows how to protect herself! Ouch! Yet some of these pictures are so beautiful, too. Beauty and the beast in the wild… 😉
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I didn’t really appreciate the complexity of spines until I started to photograph them. They really are both beautiful and painful!
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Kind of like life… 😉
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Cool shots! I had not thought of getting close to cacti! LOL
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I found a broken off piece of one type of cactus, and I thought I would pick it up and bring it home to plant. Big mistake – I would have had to go home and get a pair of pliers to capture it.
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Your macro is stunning. I bet your hardscaping is quite lovely. I visited Arizona when I was a girl. I really enjoyed it. The cactus are beautiful watchers of the sands. I didn’t know about the Javelina. I’m going to go search out a photo and see what it looks like. My guess of the bite marks would have been from a turtle or tortoise. 🙂
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Okay, I looked up the Javelina. The bite marks make sense to me now. 😉
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Javelinas have wicked teeth!
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We had Javelina’s go through nearby vegetation at our campsite while we were camped at Cave Creek Regional Park. We were sitting around a campfire and shined flashlights on them. They were huge. Very cool pictures of the cactus close up.
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I saw a small herd of them in a friend’s yard. The babies were very cute, as all babies are!
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Ouch
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I was walking one of the paths in a nearby nature reserve and soon discovered why I need to buy hard sole shoes. The spines that lay on the paths went right through the soles of my sneakers.
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These are great shots, Margie. So painful looking, yet beautiful at the same time 😉
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I think the spines are fascinating to look at – so much variety!
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Very colorful and even beautiful – unless you happen to fall in one. 🙂
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I hate to even think what that would feel like, and some of the spines are curved like fish hooks, so would be difficult to remove.
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Beautiful shots of the cacti!
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Thank you. Did you know that the plural of cactus can be cactuses?
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Some people even use cactus as a non-count noun, so the plural is merely “cactus.”
It’s interesting that many of those words ending in -us (fungus, syllabus) can also be pluralized by adding -es. I tend to follow the Latin form and add “i” – fungi, syllabi.
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Love the quote by Dorothy B. Hughes. Then just when I was in the moment of Arizona your photography brought it all home. Good job.
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Thanks Amanda.
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Fantastic photos!
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Thanks!
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We’re your friends– must you needle us so?? : P
Extremely cool photos– and intimidating!! : )
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I’m on pins and needles waiting for your next comment!
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