That's Mariposa Cactus!
A secret in the Chihuahua Desert.
ALSO KNOWN AS: Echinomastus mariposensis, Golfball cactus, Lloyd’s Mariposa cactus, Neolloydia mariposensis, silver column cactus
Not the long Pott’s mammillaria there are too many flowers on this plant, circling the top like a crown.
Or the lovely pincushion cactus. These are native to central and western Mexico, a little further south than the mariposa. Their petals are darker, their spikes finer, and they grow in colonies.
How to know
Curved spikes extending like stars from areoles
The spikes overlap around the small orbed cactus
A few flowers clustered at the top
A single vertical line on each petal
There are strands of white rock running like rivers through the Chihuahuan Desert. These are alluvial rivulets. They exist as a result of the region’s ancient aquatic history.
Imagine the pressure here: thousands of pounds of water, pressing into and slowly dissolving the rock. Think of the countless creatures who inhabited that ocean, swimming between the mountains in the water. Now almost naked in the sun, the pressure is released, and what is left is a skin of silt particles pressing against each other to make a rock so smooth it feels like silk. What remains of the creatures provides nutrition in the ground, millennia later, as ribbons of limestone.
The Chihuahuan desert runs through the center of Mexico. It is the largest and most biologically diverse desert in North and Central America. The approximate 10 inches of rain a year make it the wettest desert of the four in the northern part of the continent. It is a relatively high altitude place, ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 feet with massive mountains and plateaus that jut from the ground, or travel long and spinelike along the land. Here, yucca and agave stand tall, and the myriad of desert plants adorning the ground are tight, pale, or thick. They have fine petaled flowers that die quickly to protect against burning, or hefty long lasting ones. No matter their adaptation technique, each plant is an expert at managing glaring, sometimes hundred degree, sun and freezing cold. The seasons here are extreme.
In the Chihuahua calcareous limestone pockets the singular mariposa cactus grows, not in colonies or clusters, but alone. Even if you were to find it, you wouldn’t know what the plump skin looked like under the thick web of needles.
The Cactaceae family is almost entirely endemic to the deserts of the Americas. While there are some instances of cactus plants in regions of Africa and in Sri Lanka, there is far and away more diversity in the Americas with 1,500 variations of cactus in the Chihuahuan Desert alone.
The spikes, or spines of a cactus are highly modified leaves. On the mariposa cactus the camel colored spines bend around the skin like ribs. Only they radiate out in a circle from scores of areoles around the plant and weave over each other to create a net obscuring the entire skin. These protective leaves act as insulators in the cold desert nights, and, with their white tones, they reflect the sun in the daylight, thus cooling as well as shading the plant.
In the shape of a chicken egg, no bigger than the palm of your hand, the mariposa cactus camouflages against the pale soil.
At six inches, it is barely tall enough to peek above the rocks. The two to four flowers that grow at the apex can be yellow, pink, or white. But over time they will all turn white as if the sun is over exposing them slowly. On many of the petals a single dark line like a vein, marks their length. As it is on most cacti, the flowers are protected by a sheathlike stem covered in leaves, or bracts. These leaves are fascinating because they prove that there is latent genetic material in the mariposa cactus to make broad photosynthetic leaves. The mariposa cactus blooms in spring and autumn: the relatively mild seasons for the Chihuahua Desert. The style and pistil are quite showy for a cactus plant, though they are surrounded by many layers of petals, not unlike a water lily. There are bees known for their solitary nature in the Chihuahua desert these are the main pollinators for the mariposa. The fruits grow beneath the shield of spines.
The name ‘mariposa’ doesn’t come from a butterfly shape or pollinator. It is named after the Mariposa Mine, a mercury mine in Texas where it was “discovered” and described in 1945. This area was known as the quicksilver district because of the amount of mercury beneath the soil, this is also the region where Mariposa is relatively common: Northern Mexico, and Northwestern Texas. Mining and grazing are two of the reasons why it has remained on the threatened species list since 1979. But Cactus “rustling”, or poaching, is an issue at the border and within the Chihuahua Desert because the incessant demand for small cacti as houseplants.
Cactus plants play important roles in the desert as containers and managers of water, and as soil stabilizers, not to mention the nutrition they provide.
The mariposa cactus does not have to be big to make an impact. Every drop of water counts in the desert. The mariposa has a singular thick taproot with most of the root system extending horizontally, so they can catch rain as soon as it falls. All cacti have gel or mucilage in them that acts as glue for the water, so that they do not lose what precious amount they have if they are ruptured. These plants are so protected, so prepared for their conditions they thrive even in the cold of night. The skin of a cactus is called a cuticle. It’s thick and impenetrable throughout the day. But the release at night happens when the stomata open and the plant breathes.
Cactus plants have been used for a variety of ethnobotanical purposes. They are a natural air purifier. Spines can be used as needles. The fruit, and meat is made into drinks and eaten. The mariposa cactus’s ethnobotanical information is not accessible nor complete. But the fruit of the mariposa cactus are also edible and a good source of vitamin C, but they are enjoyed by determined desert animals and cactus beetles that come across them.
Myth for Mariposa Cactus
This desert was once a mother who saw her many children grow up and leave, one-by-one. They became the sea and the forest. They became the mountains and the plains, and moved away like rippling water across the land.
One morning the mother woke to find she was a desert. She was parched and alone. And she remained this way for thousands of years, preserving what water came from the sky and becoming familiar with her own thoughts. She learned about the rocks, reading their stories and listening to their quiet songs.
The desert, once she had learned from all the rocks, fell asleep. In her dream she saw rivers run from all of her children, and from places beyond that she had not imagined before, and she dreamed cactuses into existence and in turn the cactuses dreamed of all of the rest of the plants and animals of the desert. Now she realized she was not alone, and she thanked the cactuses by protecting them in thousands of needles.
When we see the curved spines of the mariposa cactus, we are seeing the hands of the ancient desert mother who found that her dreams were enough to create a life that could sustain her as she was.
Forager friendly?
These are a threatened species, so they are not forager friendly. Perhaps they have been of use to humans, but they are so very small their story may have fallen through the cracks.
Sources:
This guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-RXOiiTck8
https://www.desertusa.com/chihuahuan-desert.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9Szzb2YBXY
https://www.britannica.com/place/Cordillera-Central-mountains-Puerto-Rico
https://saveplants.org/plant-profile/?CPCNum=2941
https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/science-magazines/lloyds-mariposa-cactus
http://www.llifle.com/Encyclopedia/CACTI/Family/Cactaceae/26085/Sclerocactus_mariposensis
https://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/92248
http://www.sbs.utexas.edu/mauseth/researchoncacti/flowers.htm
https://lternet.edu/stories/the-desert-in-sync/#
Love that this plant looks like a Basket of Flowers