In the Tuscon area, there are many cactus, succulents, thorny shrubs, thorny trees, and a few plants that just don’t seem to fit anywhere, like ocotillo (fouquieria splendens). It grows to 20 feet high, with long straight canes and few leaves. ?When the deserts are hot and dry, the canes drop their leaves, but they regrow after a wet period.

Red, tubular flowers grow at the tips of the canes in spring.

We even saw new flowers at the end of brown canes.

The ocotillo is not a cactus. The fouquieria family is a group of 11 semi-succulent desert plants, all uniquely special, adapted to the rocky,dry, hot climates of the southwest deserts.