When Cacti Attack - Jumping Cholla

[NemJones]

Im sure many of you are aware of the Jumping Cholla, A particularly nasty
variety of cacti that have very weak stems, especially on the pups, that grow
reverse Barbed spines in staggering numbers. The cacti is known to be a desert nightmare
as the pups readily break away from the parent plant and stick like Velcro to anything they touch, even lightly.

I ran across this video and thought it was pretty funny because it shows what these things do. ( The rest of this guys videos are pretty cool too, as he tries to climb the Pain index of insect stings.)

 

[adnedarn]

hahahahahhaa OMG I dislike cactus so much. It baffles me when people talk about wanting them (both locals and people from back east or wherever). My daughter got some of this in her shoe as a toddler one time when we were out in the desert. I picked her up and she decided it was a good idea to kick her legs back and forth, transferring the cactus from one leg to the other back and forth up her leg. That ended our off road adventures that day so we could get home and take care of that.




Reminds me of this image I saw a while back, he was out in the desert on a quad in shorts and no protective gear.

 

[schmiggle]

I readily admit that I love cactuses (honestly those cholla are pretty nice looking), but they sure are prickly little buggers, for the most part. I had a teacher in high school who was doing trail work in the Grand Canyon, and at some point he stood on a boulder five hundred feet up. It started to roll, and he realized his only choice was to jump off it back towards the trail side and safety--right into a cactus.

 

[jerrysmith]

I was at the greenhouse of a member of the Connecticut Cactus and Succulent Society one summer for his open house. I was strolling through it along with many others. I was looking down and didn't see the wooden cross beam and hit my head. I got startled and threw my hands out and backhanded a really nice Mammillaria with very fine brittle spines. There must have been over a hundred of them on the back of my hand. I sheepishly went looking for some tweezers and a place to sit to start working. Turns out I asked the owners son for the tweezers. I came to find out he is also a medical doctor and he said the best way to get them all out would be with Duck Tape. Sure enough, one swipe and they mostly all came out. Never did get back to see the damage I did to his plant.