A Cactus with a Purpose

When we first bought our home in 2004, my husband and I were eager to start to turn our front yard into a private,drought tolerant and native animal-friendly garden for the birds, lizards and most importanly our tortoise Iris of course.  I found a photo of Diego Riviera and Frida Kahlo's home studio in Mexico City in one of our magazines and loved how the border was landscaped with a minimal looking hedge of cacti...

Here is how ours turned out...

Yesterday, I trimmed the cacti to grow more columnar and to make it easier to rake the mesquite leaves and harder for black widows to hide. The cuttings will dry for a couple of weeks...

then I will plant them around the wall in our backyard.  Not only is this cactus beautiful and drought tolerant but it produces the most attractive flowers at night and also the sweetest fruit that tastes like a mix between dragon fruit and kiwi to me.  I plan to grow these all around our property since you can never have enough of these fruit since we compete for them with the birds and Iris...

Here is some information on the cacti with the linked website at the bottom:
Scientific: Cereus repandus [also known as Lophocereus schottii or Cereus peruvianus (though not from Peru) and often confused with Cereus hildmannianus]Common: hedge cactus, Peruvian apple, queen of the night, night blooming cereus (the common names for plants in the genus Cereus are all mixed up!)Family: CactaceaeOrigin: Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina (uncertain)
Pronounciation: Ser-E-us re-PAN-dus
Hardiness zones: Sunset 13, 16-17, 21-24USDA 9 (marginal, protect from cold) - 11
Landscape Use: Strong focal point for xeric landscape themes, container plant, rock garden, large patios, and even as a natural screen for garbage containers.
Form & Character: A majestic columnar cactus, upright, tree-like, branched and contorted, convoluted, dominant.
Growth Habit: Slowly upright and branched to 20' (specific variants can grow to 50').
Foliage/texture: Stems sometimes segmented, dull to light green, ribs mostly 12, mostly spineless to very short spines; coarse texture.
Flowers & fruits: Flowers large and white to 6" across, borne on a elongated tube, somewhat fragrant, tube short often ridged, stigma often exerted before flower opens, flowers at night; Fruits, globose, red when ripe and rounded like a small apple with a white pulp to 2 1/2" diameter.
Seasonal color: Spectacular flower display in late spring, sometimes will flower during early fall.
Temperature: Tolerant to 20^oF.
Light: Full sun and NO shade.
Soil: A well-drained mineral soil is best.
Watering: Water only occasionally if at all during summers.
Pruning: None, except to control size by occasionally thinning out awkward or crossing stem branches.
Propagation: Easily propagated from softwood stem cuttings of most any length. Will develop roots after directly planting stem cuttings into the soil (right side up!). Make sure to first allow the cut surfaces of the stems to harden for several weeks (callous over) before planting directly into soil.
Disease and pests: Susceptible to root rot in damp poorly drained soils.

http://www.public.asu.edu/~camartin/plants/Plant%20html%20files/cereusrepandus.html

Iris is in labor!

My suspicions were true!  Iris has been acting funny lately...not her usual cheerful self.  We had our friend's tortoise Max stay with us while they were on vacation in the spring and my daughter Elle was always the one to catch them mating.  But luckily I don't have to have "the talk" with her yet since she would say that Iris is giving Max piggy back rides.  So this morning labor has begun and we are quietly observing and documenting her progress.

Meanwhile, Elle, our animal saver rescued a date beetle that was stuck in a spider web from a slow and painful death from an army of red ants.  She definitely takes after her father with her reptile, insect, and amphibian catching abilities.  

Here's a little info on the reproductive habits of the desert tortoise...

Tortoises mate in the spring and in the fall. Male desert tortoises will grow two large white glands around the chin area, called Chin Glands, that signify mating season.

Males will circle around females, biting the shells of the females in the process, and then will proceed to climb upon the female and insert his penis (a white organ, usually only seen upon careful inspection during mating, as it is hidden inside the male and can only be coaxed out with sexual implication) into the vagina of a female.(located around the tail) The male may also proceed to make grunting noises once atop a female, and may move front legs up and down in a constant motion.(as if playing a drum. Months later, the female will lay a clutch of from 4 to 8 hard-shelled-eggs (which are the size and shape of ping-pong balls), usually in June or July, and they hatch in August or September. Wild female tortoises can produce 2 or possibly 3 clutches a year. Their eggs incubate from 90 to 135 days. Tortoises reach sexual maturity at the age of 15. With a high mortality rate, their average life expectancy is between 50 to 80 years if they survive past 20 years of age.


Here is a great resource on desert tortoises...


http://www.mojavedata.gov/deserttortoise_gov/index.html


I now have approximately 90 days to figure out the fate of the baby tortoises.  We adopted Iris from the Living Desert, a local zoo that has a tortoise adoption program.  Desert tortoises are often displaced because of habitat loss due to new construction in the area.  It would be great if we could aid in the recovery efforts of the desert tortoise in the wild.