Opuntia Blog

Guilded Flicker at nest in saguaro cactus

The Guilded Flicker is found in various habitats, but it is a famous woodpecker in the Sonoran Desert where it excavates nests in saguaro cacti. This flicker is different from the Red-shafted Flicker, the Northern Flicker, and the Yellow-shafted Flicker. The Guilded Flicker eats ants, berries, and saguaro fruit.

You can read more about the Guilded Flicker here, and here. You can learn more about the saguaro catus here.

Herbertia lahue, Columbus-LaGrange, Texas

I don’t usually think of the pretty Herbertia lahue as a desert flower, but I have found it growing with Escobaria missouriensis, Opuntia lindheimeri, O. macrorhiza, and Cylindropuntia leptocaulis. The cacti were mostly at the east edges of their ranges, and H. lahue was at the western end of its range. H. lahue was growing between Columbus and LaGrange, TX.

H. lahue has beautiful 1-day flowers, but the plant flowers for a month or more making it worthwhile to grow. It can dust pastures with pale blue in the Spring because the plants are so numberous in and around LaGrange.

H. lahue is really not a desert flower because it grows across southern Louisiana and along much of the Texas Gulf coast. But the area (at least in Texas) is subject to extreme drought sometimes–so H. lahue survives as a bulb. In contrast, cacti survive the drought of coastal Texas with their own cactus adaptations (lack of leaves, waxy cuticle, etc.).