Cactus in Bloom

After a week of April, the wildflowers are mostly gone in the Arizona desert. However, the cactus are just coming into bloom. This prickly pear was especially gaudy. I must confess to cheating a bit with this picture; it was actually taken next to a street in Sun City West, rather than in the desert itself.








Now this is a natural prickly pear, growing wild in White Tank Mountain Regional Park west of Phoenix. As of April 9, the pricklys were just beginning to bloom; buckhorn cholla were at their peak; and hedgehog cacti were a bit past their prime, though some late bloomers still sported some really nice flowers.






The lizards hung out with me in the desert a couple days ago, and proved their resilience by lounging in the spines of a barrel cactus. They love the desert above all other environments.










The saguaros are beginning to bud...this has just happened in the past week. In a couple weeks the first flowers will appear, and continue to bloom one after the other well into June. The saguaro bloom is the state flower of Arizona.