I made a return visit today to the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix. I wanted to try some more floral shots using a telephoto lens. I don’t have a macro lens for close-ups but I can get a good close-up using a telephoto and standing back a bit to get focus. (My lens won’t focus on anything closer than about 1.8m). The magnification I can get with the telephoto lens compensates for not moving in close to the flower.
The flowers and cactii are pretty much in full bloom at this time of the year and I was amazed to see how much they had progressed in the one week since I last visited the gardens. I had the good fortune to see and photograph the flower of the Echinopsis Cactus, a flower that blossoms for one day only each year. How’s that for timing! This cactus is known also as the Easter Lily Cactus, perhaps due to its similarity to an Easter Lily or possibly due to its timing.
The first picture is one of the cactus, showing the flowers. There are many species of this cactus (over 100) and a tremendous amount of variation. Echinopsis plants range from very small, flattened-globose plants to quite large, treelike giants. This particular species is a low-lying one.
The main commonality among the species are their very large, showy flowers. These flowers are all very similar in structure – funnel shaped, with hairy/wooly scaled floral tubes which give rise to hairy, globular fruit filled with a soft, mushy pulp. The flowers seldom last more than a single day and may be diurnal or nocturnal depending on the species. Here’s the close-up of the flower I saw today.
