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| Photo Credit: Gary Irish |
| Hedgehog cactus can fit nicely in a small corner of a landscape. |
Sturdy, spiky spines make fooling with a cactus daunting – and sometimes dangerous. Prickly pears (Opuntia spp.) have fine bristles, known as glochids, that fly off the plant with the merest disturbance. They’re relentless, invading cloth and skin, and they take a good washing with hot soap and water to remove. Chollas (Cylindropuntia spp.) have barbed spines that are downright painful – especially when you try to pull them out of pricked skin. And the spines on most other cactus are just plain sharp. But with proper care, you can manage to handle, replant or move these pointy growers around the landscape.
The best strategy for moving prickly pears and chollas is to use tools. Never try to handle a piece of any prickly pear or cholla with your hands, even when wearing gloves! (Prickly pears will just leave them full of glochids, and cholla – undoubtedly the most difficult cactus to move – will impale you.) Shovels, tongs and even long chopsticks are useful (and often required) for handling cactus. And carpet
scraps, wide cotton rope or old garden hoses make excellent slings to move large or heavy plants. Smaller cacti can be handled with a thick wad of newspaper or an old towel. (Obviously the name of the game, no matter the cactus type, is “Handle With Care!”)How to move a cactus is only the beginning when trying to replant one in the landscape. It helps to understand how the plant “works,” too. Cacti aren’t just remarkable in appearance. They also exhibit perhaps the most dramatic adaptation that plants have evolved for life in arid regions: succulence, or the ability to store moisture. This storage is found within the stems. And in a majority of cacti, this piled-up moisture accounts for most of the weight and mass of the plant.
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