Flowers are brilliant scarlet, 2½ inches across, with a conspicuous group of green stigmas in the center. Plant is a single, erect, cylindrical, dark-green joint or stem about 5 inches high, several to many of which often group closely together forming a mound. The stems are strongly ridged and carry sharp spines in clusters. Grows in rocky or gravelly soil on plains and into foothills, southwestern Colorado. Blooms May.

This is related to some larger cacti that grow in Arizona, and there get the name of hedgehog. The name pincushion is broadly used for all the small round cacti of our area even though they are not too closely related to each other. The bright, strawberry-red flowers of the plant shown above quite set it apart from the pincushions of eastern Colorado plains. Among these are hen-and-chickens cactus, Echinocereus vividiflorus, with small, greenish-yellow flowers, also, spiny stars, Coryphantha vivipara, a round little cactus with shiny purple flowers. These plants are so like the prairie sod in color as to defy search when not in bloom. Ball cactus, Pediocactus simpsonii, of foothills and montane zones, is quite a perfect globe in shape, 3 to 6 inches in diameter, and has small pink flowers closely grouped at the top of the globe.