{"id":94,"date":"2005-05-19T08:38:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-19T15:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/fire\/2005\/05\/19\/arizona-pencil-cholla\/"},"modified":"2007-08-14T09:25:59","modified_gmt":"2007-08-14T16:25:59","slug":"arizona-pencil-cholla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2005\/05\/19\/arizona-pencil-cholla\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona Pencil Cholla"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fireflyforest.com\/flowers\/891\/cylindropuntia-arbuscula-arizona-pencil-cholla\/\">Arizona Pencil Chollas (Cylindropuntia arbuscula, formerly Opuntia arbuscula)<\/a> are fairly common in Tucson, especially in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nps.gov\/sagu\/index.htm\">Saguaro National Park<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/images\/firefly\/2005\/May\/Opuntia-arbuscula.jpg\" alt=\"Arizona Pencil Cholla (Cylindropuntia arbuscula, formerly Opuntia arbuscula)\" title=\"Arizona Pencil Cholla (Cylindropuntia arbuscula, formerly Opuntia arbuscula)\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"post-photo\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Curiously, I discovered that the Arizona Pencil Chollas in Saguaro National Park East (Rincon Mountain District) are generally red-flowered, while those in Saguaro National Park West (Tucson Mountain District) are generally <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fireflyforest.com\/flowers\/891\/cylindropuntia-arbuscula-arizona-pencil-cholla\/\">yellow-green<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fireflyforest.com\/flowers\/891\/cylindropuntia-arbuscula-arizona-pencil-cholla\/\">bronze-flowered<\/a>. Both populations bloom in May, although they are easy to overlook because each plant usually has only a few flowers blooming at one time.<\/p>\n<p>Pencil chollas get their common name from their slender stems, but the stems are generally a bit thicker than a pencil, more like a woman&#8217;s little finger in thickness or about 1\/2 inch (1.3 cm) in diameter.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/images\/firefly\/2005\/May\/Opuntia-arbuscula-fruit.jpg\" alt=\"Arizona Pencil Cholla (Cylindropuntia arbuscula, formerly Opuntia arbuscula) fruit\" title=\"Arizona Pencil Cholla (Cylindropuntia arbuscula, formerly Opuntia arbuscula) fruit\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" class=\"post-photo\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The fruits are green, and I don&#8217;t know if they are edible like the fruits of some other Tucson cacti, but they certainly don&#8217;t look too appetizing. Based on their appearance alone, they are probably tough and green-tasting, and eating them might be like eating the stems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arizona Pencil Chollas (Cylindropuntia arbuscula, formerly Opuntia arbuscula) are fairly common in Tucson, especially in Saguaro National Park. Curiously, I discovered that the Arizona Pencil Chollas in Saguaro National Park East (Rincon Mountain District) are generally red-flowered, while those in Saguaro National Park West (Tucson Mountain District) are generally yellow-green or bronze-flowered. Both populations bloom&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2005\/05\/19\/arizona-pencil-cholla\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More &rarr; <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arizona-wild-plants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}