In September of 2004, I accompanied my wife, Rachelle, on a business trip to Las Vegas, NV. While she was in class, I entertained myself by visiting a variety of places in the region. When her class was over we took a long weekend, and visited several National Parks in California, before returning to Las Vegas for our trip home.
The first day of her class I decided to get up in the wee hours of the morning to drive the few hours to Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. Fortunately, I had the time change working in my favor, so I was getting up at the usual time I would have if I were back home and going to work.
The park’s entrance sign welcomes me.
Two distinct desert ecosystems, the Colorado and Mojave, meet within Joshua Tree’s boundaries. The Colorado is the lower and drier of the two. My first stop within the park was the Cholla Cactus Garden which is in the Colorado Desert portion of the park.
This is a view of the Cholla Cactus Garden facing south towards the Pinto Basin.
This is a close-up view of a cholla (pronounced choy-ya) cactus. The cholla has two nicknames. The soft appearance of the cholla’s spines gives it the first, “teddy bear”. But despite the nickname and appearance, the cholla’s barbs are actually quite sharp (or so I was told — I didn’t actually find out). This leads to its second nickname, “jumping cholla”. When something brushes against the cholla, the spine’s microscopic barbs will penetrate deep into it, and the joint will break free from the rest of the plant, which allows it to “jump” to a new location.
Here’s a closer look at another variety of cactus, named the pencil cholla for its long, pencil-shaped joints.
