Claret Cup Cactus
One of the most striking and beautiful of all the "barrel" cacti of the American Southwestern deserts, the claret cup cactus (also known regionally by many names such as the kingcup, queencup, hedgehog cactus, pitaya roja, etc.) has large, showy and brilliantly red flowers that attract and are pollinated by hummingbirds. Unlike most cacti, the flowers of the claret cup stay open at night. Some native American tribes who shared the same habitat would collect these cacti, burn off the sharp spines, and mash them into a pulp with some locally procured sweetener (honey?) and bake them into mini sweet cakes. This one was found and photographed on a beautiful spring day in the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in Central New Mexico.
- Copyright
- ©2015
- Image Size
- 5707x3805 / 14.0MB
- Keywords
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Angiosperms, Cactaceae, Cactoideae, Caryophyllales, Chihuahuan Desert, Claret-Cup Hedgehog, Claretcup Hedgehog, Core eudicots, Crimson Hedgehog, Curve-Spined Claret Cup, E. triglochidiatus, Echinocereus, Echinocereus triglochidiatus, Eudicots, King's Crown Cactus, La Joya, Mojave Hedgehog, Mojave Kingcup Cactus, Mojave mound cactus, Mound Hedgehog-Cactus, NM, National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico, Pachycereeae, Plantae, Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, Socorro County, Spineless Hedgehog, Strawberry Cactus., arid, botany, cacti, cactus, claret, claret cup, claret cup cactus, claretcup, color, colorful, crimson, cup, desert, dicot, dusk, evening, flora, green, heat, hedgehog cactus, hurt, kingcup cactus, mound cactus, nature, pain, painful, perennial, pitaya, pitaya roja, plant, poke, prickle, prickly, red, sharp, shrub, southwest, spike, spiky, spring, succulent, thorn, thorny, west, western, wild
- Contained in galleries
- Pachycereeae
