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Echinocereus stramineus, plus bee 5/29/22
This species in habitat can get to be a clump of maybe several hundred heads, more than 5 feet in diameter. I've seen hundreds of these clumps in Big Bend National Park in West Texas. The plant is also native to southern New Mexico, but I've not seed the exuberance of growth there as in BBNP. I kept this plant for years in a 2.5" pot, and it never made offsets. I transplanted it into this 10" (25 cm) pot, and it made offsets. If you learn only one thing from my random musing in these e-mails, I hope it's that you can control the size of a plant by the size of the pot it's in. I carefully pollinated this flower with pollen from the plant in the previous picture. This flower thereby gave a fruit that's now gradually getting bigger. That is, pollination was successful. If you haven't spotted the bee, it's at 3 o'clock near the outer rim. (50/56)