This Ferocactus recurvus blooms in mid-winter every year, usually right about the weeks of Christmas and New Year’s Day. It does this based mostly on day length, not temperatures, as I’ve seen it doing this in the snow and in warm years alike. Planted in 2009 from a 1-gallon pot at about 5 inches diameter and tall, this plant now stands about 14 inches/35 cm tall.

The prior photo was taken when the plant was dry, and therefore the color we would normally see it as being. But if it rains or the plant is watered, and the spines get wet, they turn a remarkably brighter red color. I am not exactly sure of what causes this feature, but it’s reasonably common in barrel cacti. There, that’s better….

The beautiful spiraling of the ribs is characteristic of the species. Ferocactus recurvus is a close ally of the much more commonly grown Ferocactus latispinus, and is sometimes considered a subspecies thereof, but is much larger and has those spiraling ribs that add so much charisma. If the current Latin name is accepted, it should perhaps be called Ferocactus latispinus ssp spiralis. The native habitat is from the southeastern Mexican states of Puebla and Oaxaca, where it grows in semidesert scrublands and dry grasslands and becomes substantially larger than the modest-stature and more widespread F. latispinus growing to the north. Additionally, F. latispinus does not possess spiraling ribs to any significant extent, so in between that and the size, this is a decidedly unique subspecies.

The purple flowers are unusual among barrel cacti, and add that particular color to the spectrum available within the genus. This plus the winter blooming nature means that if one collects all the Feros available, you can get almost every color of the rainbow (save for blue, which is the only color never found in cactus flowers) and in every month of the year. No wonder so many people are fans of the genus. I know I certainly am!

Here’s a view of the larger garden context of the plant shown above. It’s on the south side of my house, and I have been hesitant to post photos from this particular angle in the past because I have never gotten around in the past 6 years to cleaning up the piles of construction lumber and papercrete slipforms that I stashed on the back patio area while trying to make my final move out here back in April 2012. To be fair to myself, however, there was a lot of unfinished stuff to do at the time and I had a deadline to stop renting the house in town, so I did what I could in between moving the household and thousands of nursery plants. In the summer of 2017 I spent many weeks finally removing stacks of papercrete blocks, bins of future paper building materials, and piles of other lumber away from the house and shed out front. I also pruned a series of juniper trees, lifting up the foliage a bit to enable some shaded planting spaces for plants that prefer to have a break from the torrid summer sun. All of this took a lot of effort but was worth doing since it freed up literal planting space and removed visual clutter. This less-visible back patio area is the final holdout pile of debris I need to deal with. And it shall be done, soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the slipforms with the cactus. 😉