Wildflower Blooms
From Aunt Rachel, NE of Hyder, Az up in the hills.
Any guesses as to the Opuntia species? I think we can eliminate the Mojave Grizzly Bear cactus, since it’s not in the Mojave. And yet, it’s almost certainly one of the Opuntia polyacantha’s, and the spination does look most like O. polyacantha v. erinacea. I’ve only ever seen it with yellow flowers, but my copy of Anderson says it can have pink flowers. Thus I think we can determine that this is a Grizzly Bear cactus, just not a Mojave Grizzly Bear. Since it’s found in the Sonoran Desert, I think we can call this a Sonoran Grizzly Bear, also O. polyacantha v. erinacea, and chalk up the flower color to natural variation.
Science!
