I thought that last year’s blooming season for the indigenous horsecrippler cactus was prodigious. I had literally no idea. The way they’re all going insane, I’ll be up to my armpits in ripe Echinocactus texensis fruit by the end of May.
Of particular note should be the areolae in this closeup, because it helps explain how the cactus gets its common name. When the cactus dries out in summer heat, it tends to collapse, and those big downward-pointing spines point up. On the edges of the cactus, these are sharp, long, and strong enough to punch through the bottom of a standard US Army combat boot, and I know this from experience. (In fact, I came awfully close to losing a toe when I did so. You do NOT want one of those spines breaking off, especially if you’re a few miles from medical assistance, and I’m just glad the spine creased my toe instead of spitting, and possibly splitting, the bone.) Considering the amount of local wildlife that would gleefully feed on cactus pulp without that additional protection, this level of armament makes sense.
Anyway, these are part of the ongoing Kared adoption program, and they should be an added inducement to see them at May’s Texas Frightmare Weekend show. If we’re lucky, any resultant fruit may even be ripening by then.