An extensive grove of teddybear chollas (Cylindropuntia bigelovii) off of I-40, west of Needles, California in the eastern Mojave Desert. The yellow shrubs are blooming brittlebush (Encelia farinosa) which flowered abundantly in March and April 2017 after above-average rains which fell during the prior winter. Read on for a comprehensive discussion on why chollas are so brutal, but why there’s no need to unduly fear them, either.

Because I work with all things cactus, people share videos and other information about them on my social media feeds with me. This particular video came across my timeline recently. It was made by ABC 15 Arizona, and titled “10 Things You Need to Know About Jumping Cholla”. It’s a poorly crafted piece about 90 seconds long, full of misinformation about these plants. I’ll reluctantly link to it below so that you can see it.

https://www.abc15.com/news/state/video-10-things-you-need-to-know-about-jumping-cholla

Meanwhile, I’ll just debunk a few things about this video, which is not well done and clearly not fact checked with botanists, or realists of any type actually:

-1:08 “If you or your dog get too close, a piece will break off and fly at your body.” Nope, dead wrong. Get as close as you want without fear. If you actually touch it, you might get a spine attached, but it doesn’t “fly at your body”. Utter nonsense.

-0:58 “The joint attachments are loosely connected. When someone steps on the soil at the base of the cactus, the segments detach and become airborne. #science.” Actually, #notscience. You can walk through an entire grove of teddybear chollas (Cylindropuntia bigelovii) or jumping chollas (C. fulgida) and as long as you watch your step nothing will happen to you. You will NOT be suddenly covered by airborne joints. This is a singularly stupid statement. One Facebook commenter even insists that since chollas are attracted to moisture, they can jump at you. In fact, one jumped at her on a non-windy day from three feet away! This assertion is at best mind boggling ignorance, and at worst an outright lie. It is true that the joints are loosely connected but you still have to make contact yourself for you to become impaled. That said, it is nearly impossible to bring dogs and small children into a cholla grove and not get them stuck full of joints, but that’s because you can’t explain the dangers to them. However as an intelligent adult, you can easily grasp why this is moronic.

Look at me! I walked through this extensive forest of jumping chollas (Cylindropuntia fulgida) in Sonora, Mexico without being covered in flying cactus parts! And I assure you I was moist and alive when I took these photos. Despite the peril, somehow I survived, much like one of those characters in an adventure movie who never dies despite falls from enormous heights and attacks by rabid mythical creatures. I risked life and limb to get these photos. I hope my audience appreciates the mortal danger I was in.

Now for some actual explanation as to why jumping and teddybear chollas are the way they are…. This extensive clonal stand of C. fulgida in northwestern Mexico’s arid Sonoran Desert spans approximately one mile in length and over a half mile in width. These and several other species of Cylindropuntia are sterile triploids, which is a fancy genetic term for plants that cannot reproduce sexually because their tripled chromosome counts (3x) cannot divide in half evenly, unlike normal diploid (2x) or tetraploid (4x) types, which can. Therefore in order to survive, a triploid species must develop an alternative mode of propagation, since sexual reproduction via seeds is impossible. 

There are about a half dozen sterile triploid cholla species in the USA and Mexico, but the two species most familiar and frequently encountered are the teddybear cholla (Cylindropuntia bigelovii) and jumping cholla (C. fulgida), both of which are featured in this post as well as in the ABC15 video. The mode of propagation for all of these triploid species is fragile, loosely attached vegetative parts, commonly called joints, which detach very easily and fall to the ground or can be carried away on the legs, hooves, sides, and/or butts of animals, including obviously humans and their pets. These joints can also be moved around by strong winds, flash flooding, or the collection activities of rodents such as pack rats and rock squirrels, which utilize the spiny joints for both food and as physical protection at the entrances of their burrows or nests to effectively deter predators.

Wherever one of these joints eventually ends up, it can send out roots and anchor to the ground, which then grows and eventually forms a new individual plant. It is in this mode that these extensive clonal colonies of chollas can form, as shown here. These are all basically the same individual, genetically speaking, since they are all clones and did not undergo the more usual sexual reproductive mode, which results in genetic variance.

-0:50 “The cactus spines are hollow and hooked, which makes them incredibly difficult to remove.” Semi true. More accurately stated, the spines are microscopically barbed, not actually hooked like some barrel cactus (Ferocactus) or pincushion cactus (Mammillaria) species are. They are not hollow, but they do have a papery sheath, which can come off and reveals the sharp barbed spine beneath. They are indeed hard to remove once stuck in your skin, but the video’s statement is a bit inaccurate. (Well, at least as opposed to outright stupidly false.)

Here’s a closer view of both spines and flowers of the other cholla species under most discussion here, the teddybear cholla (C. bigelovii). The plant is deliberately named ironically, because while they look soft and cuddly at a distance, they absolutely are not! All of the sterile triploid species in the USA and Mexico do bloom, but true to name they do not produce viable pollen or seeds. In the case of both teddybear and jumping chollas, the fruits are less spiny than the vegetative joints are, and neither one contains seeds that will germinate although often shriveled infertile ovules are present. Normally this would mean that these plants would die out within a generation due to this inability to reproduce sexually via seeds, but these interesting chollas have gotten around that by being viciously mean, fragile, and clingy. While these are terrible qualities in a spouse, they are actually extremely useful characteristics for survival in North America’s most arid deserts.

-0:35 “Heads up! A strong wind could trigger the spiny pieces to fly and hit anyone nearby!” Way overstated, if technically marginally true in rare and extreme instances. Strong winds may be able to detach a cholla joint and make it fall to the ground. It will not become “airborne” and hover around looking for a target like you. It’s not a wasp, for crying out loud. Stay away from chollas during a microburst thunderstorm windstorm (usually followed by heavy rain and dangerous lightning) and you will be fine. The slightest breeze will not cause airborne cactus parts, nor will even a strong one, just like merely walking near a plant won’t do that either.

-0:22 “You’ll want to suck the painful spines out of your body. Don’t! The glochids could embed in your mouth or tongue… which could be fatal.” Oh gimme a break you huge old Drama Queens. First of all, get rid of the main cactus parts without your fricking mouth, idiots. You can use a metal tool or a large-toothed comb (if you carry those around on hikes), a pair of sticks or a pair of rocks (these are almost always available nearby), or anything else that will enable you to detach the majority of the joint segments successfully. Then, if there are spines left stuck in your skin, use tweezers or forceps to extract them if they are handy. But if not, it is fine to gently use your front incisor teeth to grab a larger spine and pull it out, since sometimes you can get a better grip using your teeth than you can with your fingertips. Once you have it, spit it out. Does a spine sometimes get stuck in your lips, tongue, or gums in the process? Sure, it has happened to me a time or two. But I survived. It’s not fatal.

The only caveat I will state is that sometimes inexperienced dogs that get nailed with a cholla part will reflexively grab the spiny joint with their mouths, and end up with numerous spines embedded in that sensitive area. However I know of no dog fatalities as a result of this either, although sometimes a trip to the vet might be required. This is why you should leash dogs near abundant stands of chollas, so that you keep them safely away and this won’t happen. And besides, even if it does, it’s so painful that most dogs do it once and then learn not to do it again. I’ve seen experienced desert dogs gently nip at an offending cactus joint with their teeth and carefully tug it loose and spit it out in the same manner I described humans should do. If a couple of small spines remain in their mouth, well those usually wear out within a day or two if you can’t get them out with tweezers. In any case it’s not deadly. Stop being hysterical. Educate, don’t fearmonger.

I’ll insert some photos taken in March and April 2017 along the Sonoran coastline of the Sea of Cortez. They illustrate the way these chollas can also integrate well into the larger vegetative community, and be more than just monocultural stands of clones. You can see in enlarged versions of the photos how there are other cacti, including several large columnar species, wildflowers, and woody shrubs and perennials also mixed in with the chollas. They provide food and habitat for desert critters and birds, and add distinctive visual appeal and strong regional presence to the scenery. There’s no need to vilify them, just respect them and act like a reasonable person who isn’t terrified all the time. (The same applies to snakes, scorpions, and much more, but that’s fodder for a different post sometime.)

-0:17 “Stay at least three feet away from the jumping cholla at all times.” Okay, that’s decent advice for small children and pets to whom once again you cannot explain the dangers. But feel free to get closer than that if you want or need to as a sane, educated adult. And one small caveat is that the photo shown in the video at this point is of several buckhorn cholla fruits (Cylindropuntia acanthocarpa) stuck to some guy’s arm, not pieces of jumping chollas (C. bigelovii/C. fulgida). The dry seed husks of buckhorn chollas are covered in sharp spines and can be extremely annoying and hard to spot littering the ground. (Buckhorn chollas, for the record, are not sterile triploids. They reproduce primarily from viable seeds, and the vegetative joints are firmly attached to the plants, even if the loose, spiny fruits are shed everywhere.) These dry fruit husks act similarly to the vegetative joints of the other species, and serve to spread seeds around the desert. But they are also incapable of independent locomotion, although they are obnoxiously easy to kick up while walking. When they end up in your leg as a result of you trampling it unseen and kicking it upwards, it may appear as if it jumped at you. But it didn’t. You still had to make contact with it first. Accidentally perhaps, but you are the one who did it.

Here is where I will pause to introduce a third species of viciously clingy cholla, the wonderfully-named Cylindropuntia molesta from Baja California. Commonly known only in Spanish by the name clavelina (which I believe translates roughly to “little nails”), C. molesta is indeed a bothersome plant in the same vein as its northern cousins. What separates it from the others I’ve discussed is that it is not actually a sterile triploid with a 3x chromosome count. Rather it is an octoploid with 8x the normal chromosome number. I do not know for sure if the seeds on C. molesta are viable, but in theory they are since 8 is an even number and can be evenly divided in half during meiosis. But even if C. molesta does produce viable seeds, it clearly has all of the same vegetative propagation-dominant characteristics of its sterile triploid sister species.

Like teddybear and jumping chollas, clavelinas are brittle and easily attached to skin and animal hides, which also means being just as difficult to remove. This does not endear them to many Mexicans any more than it endears their northern cousins to Americans, but to hard core cholla fanatics, they have a sere and terrible beauty. I grow this plant in Arizona where it merges seamlessly with the other cacti I cultivate. And I enjoy their harsh golden beauty just as much as the two other, native species.

-0:07 Lastly, full body tactical assault gear isn’t necessary if you’re reasonably careful in working with or around chollas. Good leather gloves are necessary; goggles or sunglasses might not be a bad idea if you’re a klutz; use metal tools to dig, cut, lift, and handle the pieces for disposal because the spines won’t cling to metal, and that’s actually about it. Drop the hyperbolic drama. Oh, and I found the loud, grinding music on the video as annoying as the cactus spines themselves. Thank god for mute buttons.

Poor video, ABC15 Arizona. Do better next time, and consult someone in the sciences for a more realistic assessment of the dangers these important Arizona native plants pose.

Now that hopefully the reader is less paranoid about approaching chollas, might I perhaps interest you in a parcel of land available for sale outside of the Mexican town of Puerto Peñasco? 

Advertised as being 10 hectares in size (about 25 acres), this plot of desert real estate is listed as available for purchase via a road sign. Only about a half mile inland from the actual beach, and with easy access to Mexican Highway 2, whatever the asking price is, it is undoubtedly worth it. Now that you aren’t scared of Flying Cholla Monsters anymore, what are you waiting for?

Well I’m not afraid! I, for one, am actually working to create what I am calling the Great Wall Of Cholla. This remarkable quasi-natural feature is under construction right now here at D:F Ranch in Yucca, Arizona. Comprised of thousands of cholla joints of several species that have been planted and rooted, the GWOC is designed to eventually grow into an impenetrable barrier around the perimeter of my 40 acre property. The idea is for the GWOC to work in conjunction with fencing to provide a deterrent to various hooved herbivores such as roaming open range cattle, javelina, and deer. Especially the latter, which are quite capable of leaping over tall fencing in a way that the cows and javelina are not.

I expect that once filled out in about a decade, the GWOC plus an 8 foot barbed wire fence will effectively exclude all deer from wandering in to consume the other plants I’d like to grow. In any event, the final few pics show the ease with which large numbers of teddybear cholla joints can be rooted and then planted out into the desert. The photos show only a small fraction of the total number of chollas planted, a figure that reaches into the thousands.

See? Some of us Arizonans actually LIKE these dreaded chollas!