Photo of the Day: Cholla Blossom

Thanks to Keri Kirby for today’s Photo of the Day. I think this is a “pencil cholla,” aka cylindropuntia arbuscula, but with more than twenty cholla species in the Southwest I’d need an expert to confirm. Interestingly, botanist used to classify cholla as a subspecies of prickly pear (Opuntia genus). The middle elevations of the […]

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Joshua Treat

For the pre-dawn departure on my morning cycling today I was rewarded with a splendid display of the spring blooms of the yucca brevifolia, a few examples of which have been planted in Scottsdale and Paradise Valley. Most of the Joshua trees I have seen have been in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California (home […]

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