Backlit Barrel Family holiday card

Photo by Marty Horowitz 12/11/2014

One of the third graders on 12/11 corrected me when I said these are Arizona Barrel Cacti; he calls them Fishhook Cacti. We're both right, fortunately. Common names for this species also include Candy Barrel and Southwestern Barrel. (Common names can be a barrel of monkeys!) We're all talking about Ferocactus wislizenii. Fero- from the Latin ferus, which means fierce. And wislizenii for Frederick Adolf Wislizenus, 19th-century German physician and amateur botanist who collected in the southwestern U.S. You can look up the meaning of botanical names at The Botanary at Dave's Garden. Fun for the whole family : -)