Basin wiki · Plants
Pencil cholla
Cylindropuntia ramosissima · branched pencil cholla · diamond cholla
A thin-stemmed cholla of rocky bajadas. Less famous than teddy-bear, and still a reason to watch your ankles.
Where you'll see it
Pencil cholla is scattered on creosote flats, desert pavement, and rocky bajadas in the park and on the hotter ground toward Twentynine Palms. Jepson puts it in desert scrub below about 4,300 feet across the California deserts. It rarely forms the impenetrable glowing thickets of teddy-bear cholla. You notice it one plant at a time, usually when a trail cuts close.
How to tell it
Stems are narrow, about the width of a pencil, with a diamond-patterned surface and long spines that often look pinkish or gray under a pale sheath. Joints tend to stay on the plant; Jepson describes them as firmly attached, which is the useful contrast with teddy-bear cholla. Flowers are small and dull orange, pink, or brown, easy to miss next to a beavertail in full bloom. The fruit dries and can be densely spiny.
Spines anyway
Firmly attached does not mean friendly. A single spine in a boot is the usual encounter, and dogs still collect them on low wanders through pavement. Give the plant a foot of clearance on a bike or a horse. If you are clearing a walkway on private land, lift cut stems with tools and do not leave a pile where someone will kneel.
Do not “thin” a bajada
Pencil cholla is part of the spacing of a healthy creosote flat, not a weed that invaded it. Plants are native and slow. The park’s rule is the simple one: leave cacti where they are. On a homestead lot, the same plant is also telling you the soil is old desert surface, which is worth more than a scraped pad if you are trying to keep dust down.