Introducing one of my all-time favorite desert plants, the Ocotillo. This plant (oh-ko-TEE-oh) looks exactly like straight, barbed sticks poking up from the ground. At least, it does until it rains. Then leaves burst from the woody stems, only to quickly wither and drop once drought returns. The tops of the stems support brilliant red flowers in February and March, but return to dried-out, pokey looking upside-down octopuses for most of the year. People in the region still use cut ocotillo stems planted in a line as a living fence, and something about a towering fence that hurts would definitely dissuade me from coming onto somebody's property! At times like these I seriously wish I lived somewhere a little more arid than the forests of East Texas - I want so many desert plants in my life!!
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