One plant that we saw over and over again while in Big Bend National Park was the prickly pear. I’d seen prickly pears as part of landscaping all around Austin, so I was familiar with the sight of them, but this was the first time I’d seen them in the wild. In their desert habitat, they are all the more stunning. If you’ve walked for any significant amount of time in the desert, you’ll know your eyes seem to adjust to the flat beige color of nearly everything in the landscape. The hard-packed dirt under foot, the shrubs, the rocks, the occasional green agave. Because of this, the variety and brightness of color in the prickly-pear is all the more stunning.
Bright yellow flower against the harsh spikes of the cactus make for the perfect metaphor for the surrounding desert. Stark, shocking beauty in tandem with danger. While the sight of a prickly pear cactus is hardly shocking given its wide use as a centerpiece around Austin, seeing in its original context gave me a new appreciation for this vibrant cactus.
iNaturalist Link: http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/5977434