Arizona, Land of Flowering Cactus Jewels

The longer you live in desert country the more you come to admire and respect the various individual plants forming the family of Cactaceae, intimate and dominant features of our landscape. Cacti, or cactuses, if you wish, depending on your choice of the plural (and the dictionary gives you a choice) are so widespread in our state we could lay title to the "Cactus State," although botanists say there are more species of Cacti in Texas than in Arizona, but, of course, there is more of Texas than there is Arizona, size-wise. Our cactaceous friends are many and varied (the word, incidentally is from the Greek kactos meaning "a prickly plant"). They vary from the Giant Saguaro to a small Pincushion. They include one of our favorites, the Prickly Pear, vagabond of the species, which by now has found its way to frigid Canada where, we understand, it thrives. They are all capable of producing some of the most exotic and beautiful flowers you can find anywhere and maybe that is why we love them. One always loves beauty!

Our flowering cactus jewels are short-lived in their blossoming stage. Desert visitors, unaccustomed to desert ways, become enchanted when they come upon a cactus plant in bloom. They visualize with rapture what a charming centerpiece such floral loveliness would be in a vase upon their living room table. Alas! They are destined to be disappointed. Most of our cacti bloom at night and by mid-morning the next day the most radiantly showy of such blooms begin to wilt and fade. Children of the sun, as they are, they apparently are hesitant to display their beauty to the mid-day sun. There is a good reason for this: only at night are desert insects about, the main instruments of desert plant pollination. Cactus flowers belong in their native habitat in the desert, to be admired or photographed, and are unhappy and reluctant to be moved. Lawmakers in our state, knowing this, have passed a state law prohibiting in any way the mutilation of desert plants. Cactus flowers should be left unmolested. When they turn to seed, those seeds are needed to enrich the desert with more cactus plants, all of which will eventually produce more flowering cactus jewels to please the eye and enrich the souls of those who follow desert trails later. In the floral kingdom there are few flowers to match in coloring and beauty a cactus flower. Considering the conditions under which they come to bloom, one can safely say they are the miracle flowers of the floral kingdom. Such miracles are the result of the will to survive.