Name
(e-keen-oo-KAY-ree-us tri-glow-chidi-A-tus) Echinocerens is from the Greek echinos, meaning "a hedgehog," and cereus meaning "a wax taper." These names refer to the plant's spiny resemblance to a hedgehog (or so the early Europeans thought) and the plant's shape, respectively. Triglochidialus means "three barbed bristles" and refers to the straight spines arranged in clusters of three. Also called claret cup cactus, after the reddish, cup-shaped flowers.
Description
A small barrel-shaped cactus. Few to several hundred stems in a compact hemispheric clump or mound. The stems are mainly cylindrical, up to one foot long and one to two and one-half inches thick, and with nine or ten ribs. The central spines are straight or slightly curved and one to two inches long. Smaller radial spines arise from below the central spines at a sharp angle.
Stems are green and contain chlorophyll. There are no leaves.
Flowers are scarlet red, with many petals, and are cup-shaped. The flowers are one to two inches long and grow below the stem's apex. Hummingbirds are the primary pollinators and must stick their entire head into the flower to reach the nectar chambers at the flower's base. In the process, the hummingbird's forehead gets dusted with pollen. (Sometimes they look like another species of hummingbird!) The fruits are red at maturity and are edible (remember to burn off the spines first!). Flowers bloom April through June, from low to higher elevations. This is the first cactus to bloom in the spring.
The flowers stay open at night, unlike many other species of cacti whose flowers close in the evening. The flowers last three to five days.
Habitat
The plants grow in gravelly soils in grasslands, shrublands, pinyon/juniper, or aspen communities. The plants often grow against a rocky outcrop or within the rocky outcrop. Plants occur from three thousand and twenty to seven thousand nine hundred and fifty feet in elevation.
Notes
Cacti have a waxy coating, thickest on the sunny side. This helps the plant minimize water loss. The spines, which help deter herbivores, also provide small amounts of shade on the cacti's surface. The shade reduces the temperature on the stem and again helps to minimize moisture loss.
To also minimize moisture loss to the atmosphere, cacti open their pores, called stomata, during the cooler hours of night to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide. The plants photosynthesize during the day, but keep their pores closed.
Cacti can store water in the pulp of the plant's fleshy stems; it is an old tale that one can get water from a cactus. After a rain, cacti can swell like an accordion with the extra moisture. Some Native American groups collected the claret cup's stems, burned off the spines and mashed the stems. Sugar was then added to the mix and baked to form sweet cakes.
Some specimens of the claret cup lack spines.
Claret cup cacti can grow at high elevations due to the clumping of the individual stems which helps to reduce the amount of surface area exposed, thus reducing the rate at which heat is lost to the air.
Hedgehog
