There Was This Cactus, You See....

One of the field courses I taught during my last two years as a college professor was entitled “Biology of the Baja.” It was a desert ecology class, focusing on central Baja California del Norte (the northern half of Baja California). My students were continually amazed at the many adaptations plants can possess that enable them to live in a very arid environment. And, of course, there were the cacti. The most numerous were the many species of the genus Opuntia, the jointed cacti known as prickly pears and chollas (choyas). What all members of the genus have, in addition to the jointed stems and branches, is the arrangement of heavily barbed spines on disk-like structures.

The disks bear large central spines and a number of variably smaller spines in a circle at the edges of the disks. Covering much of the disc are short, fine fuzz-like glocchidia. If these get into your skin, they are worse than any glass wool fibers I’ve ever found. The presence of the barbed spines along with the fact that the joints quite easily break off of the plants make walking through a patch of such cactuses a bothersome event.

Some Opuntia have only a few, widely dispersed spine clusters. Others, like the “Teddy Bear” cholla common in southern California, Arizona and on into Mexico, have densely packed spine clusters and actually look furry from a distance.

But the species to watch out for is Opuntia molesta. It doesn’t have a common name to my knowledge, but its Latin name is very fitting. The clusters of spines are moderately close together; but worse, the central spine is between 2 ½ and 3 inches long, hard as steel, and as sharp as any needle around. Everyone in my classes had their turn experiencing this cactus up close.

A little over three years ago my son and I drove down to Arizona to visit my folks. One day while there, we were driving around and stopped at a garden center that specialized in native desert plants. I was looking for a small thick-leaved yucca to bring back home to plant in our flower bed. I happened to glance over the large lot, and exclaimed to the owner, who was with us, “You’ve got some molesta!” Sure enough, I’d recognized about six O. molesta plants on the other side of the lot.

The owner explained he’d harvested them (with special permits) from a big lot that was being developed down near Yuma, AZ. He mentioned how much pain (literally) he’d gone through to save the plants. The central spines easily pass through leather gloves. In fact, one spine had once gone through a fourth-inch of rubber on a running shoe and about as far into the end of the big toe of one of my students. Because the spines are barbed, we had to use pliers to extract it. The gardener could not have been exaggerating his pain.

More recently, I’ve come to realize how much we humans are like those Opuntia molesta plants. Christ approaches, and our natural sinful tendency is to lash out, all prickles. And yet, He wanted so much to save us, He decided we were worth the pain, even when we drove our spines through His hands and feet and into the cross. The neat thing is that He has promised to change our hearts and natures if we turn them over to Him. It is possible in this life to become like the almost-spine-free prickly pears seen in many gardens. Yes, we may continue with a few spines here and there while here on this earth. But the day will come, Paul tells us, when we’ll be changed in the twinkling of an eye to become just like Jesus in nature (1 Corinthians 15:51, 52). I really look forward to that day.

I’ve often wondered what a spine-free cholla would look like.

Dr. G