A beautiful shot of the cholla blooms. Nice faded background emphasizes the beautiful yellow fruit and the thorns.

Mmmmm...looks good,even has built in toothpicks. Nice pic.

I'll just enjoy your capture, and stay away from these, :)
Tigs♥ =^..^=

I bet your lens wasn't too happy to get this close either if those needles are as sharp as you say. A truly fascinating plant in many respects then. I like the way you have included only what is important in the frame.

Doug sharp as a pin and pixel perfect.

Rob

Aye, I been on the receiving end of something like at times!...

Cool capture, such fine detail too

Very well captured close-up.

Tanju

Enjoy the soft colours Doug, very nice work! Mich

Really nice close up, I hope you weren't wounded! I accidentally sat on a prickly pear once. It was NOT pleasant! (do you have massochistic tendencies?)

Unfortunately, Doug, I know about this particular cactus from 1st hand experience. After growing up in Illinois at a time when house plants were all the rage, I managed to have a jade plant that was almost 6" tall. My friends were amazed at my green thumb. When I moved to southern California, I found 5 foot high hedges made from jade plants that actually grew outdoors. I started taking clippings and then started trading with friends at succulent and cactus shows and ended up with 100+ species. A friend at work told me about a house across the street from him that was owned by drug dealers. When the police raided the house which turned out to have a meth lab, my co-worker told me about the cactus that were growing in the back. Some of these babies were six feet tall. I took a couple of every variety and put them in a succulent and cactus garden. They spread like a wildfire; so I had to get in there with a shovel and pruners and the thickest leather work gloves I could find. You're right. These guys have no problem with denim and under the right circumstances can penetrate leather. On one particularly beautiful spring day, I was out in my garden wearing only a pair of gloves and my flip flip rubber sandals. I saw some weeds in front of me and bent over with my little hand garden tool and felt a sharp pain in my butt. Driving to my dermatologist's office was excruciating, but after over an hour, I was barb free. If you look at these things under a microscope, you can see the minute multitude of fish hook barbs. I have since dug these out and poured burning embers from my wood stove on them, chopped them into small pieces, sprayed them with Round-Up and buried them. Every spring there are a few shoots coming up. I've been repeating the process for a decade. Having these in a cactus garden makes as much sense as having a hyena as a house pet.

Beautifully captured. Gives me the creeps.

Roger

A Fantastic photo of this Fascinating plant,Doug.

This is a terrific capture of this unusual bloom. Wonderful color here also.

Love the detail ... excellent capture, Doug.

A nice closeup of the cactus, Doug. Lovely warm colours and lighting in the scene. Good details.