Angels Wings

Description:

The flowers are up to 2 inches (5 cm) across and have broad, yellow tepals (petals and petal-like sepals), yellow anthers, and dark green stigma lobes. The flowers are followed by round to egg-shaped, red to purplish, spineless but glochid-dotted fruits. The stems are green, erect to sprawling, and segmented into numerous thin, flat, round to egg-shaped pads. The stem pads lack regular spines but are polka-dotted with yellow, white, or red-brown glochids (micro-spines) at each aureole. The flowers emerge from the top edges of the pads.

Habitat:

Desert, upland

Notes:

While this cactus looks like it's covered in fuzzy "polka dots" they are actually clusters of spines that can be very hard to remove because they are so tiny! When in bloom, this cactus is a favorite of bees :)