Silver cholla facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Silver cholla |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Genus: |
Cylindropuntia
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| Species: |
echinocarpa
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| Synonyms | |
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Opuntia echinocarpa — Engelm. & Bigelow |
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The silver cholla (also called golden cholla or Wiggins' cholla) is a type of cactus. Its scientific name is Cylindropuntia echinocarpa. It used to be known as Opuntia echinocarpa.
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Where Silver Cholla Grows
The silver cholla cactus grows naturally in the Southwestern United States and in northwestern Mexico. You can find it in hot, dry places like the Sonoran Desert, the Mojave Desert, and the Colorado Desert. It grows in states like California and others.
This cactus often lives in dry riverbeds, areas with creosote bush scrub, and woodlands with Joshua trees or pinyon-juniper trees. Its range stretches from Mono County in California all the way down to the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico.
What Silver Cholla Looks Like
The silver cholla is a big cactus that can look like a tree. It can grow taller than 2 meters (about 6.5 feet). Its stems and branches are made of round, green parts called tubercles. These tubercles are about 1.5 centimeters (0.6 inches) wide and just under 1 centimeter (0.4 inches) tall.
Each fleshy tubercle has up to 20 long, straight spines. These spines can be grayish or yellowish and nearly 4 centimeters (1.6 inches) long. The tubercles of the silver cholla are less than twice as wide as they are long. This helps tell it apart from another cactus, the buckhorn cholla (Cylindropuntia acanthocarpa). The buckhorn cholla grows in similar areas.
Flowers and Fruit
The flowers of the silver cholla are usually greenish-yellow. Sometimes, they can be pinkish or brownish. After the flowers, the cactus grows fruit. The fruit is bumpy, spiny, and tan in color. It has white seeds inside and a smell that some people think is like old butter. The fruit can be up to 2 centimeters (0.8 inches) long.
Not many of these fruits grow to be fully ripe. You can often see many small, unripe fruits on the ground below the plant.
How Silver Cholla Reproduces
This cactus mostly grows new plants from its seeds. However, it can also reproduce in another way. If a piece of the stem (a tubercle) breaks off and falls to the ground, it can sometimes grow roots and become a new plant. This is called asexual reproduction.
See also
In Spanish: Cylindropuntia echinocarpa para niños
