Flower Remedy Study: Colorado Hookless Cactus

There is a little flower that emerges in the desert spring. This flower has a scent I can only describe as a very gentle bomb. Deliriously sweet and perfumed. Like when your favorite scent wafts to your nose after your wrists have been warmed by the sun. Only there for a moment before the wind takes it with it.

We moved to the desert a few years ago and at first, I felt as if I’d landed on another sweltering planet. My eyes took a long time to adjust and start seeing the absolute beauty that makes residence here. I didn’t notice the flowers at first and on a walk one day we found these little cacti, sparingly scattered through the property. On 8 acres I think we have less than 25. I’m sure we haven’t scouted all of them, but they are few and far between. Like most things in the desert, I suppose.

That spring when they bloomed, I was, let’s just say, awestruck. There were tiny flowers crowning the top of each cactus, and they only opened for a few hours each day until about 2 or 3 weeks passed and they were gone. I remember getting on my hands and knees to smell them because the flower is only 3 inches off the ground, covered in dirt and juniper bark, I laid there for an eternity. The smell, I remember, brought me back into my body. It made me feel so beautiful in a strange way, like the flower had magnetic powers, and I felt that visceral confidence all day.

So here are some questions I started asking the cactus when I interfaced with it.

I’d ask how I could install that confidence forever, like never be without it.

She said you can’t. It’s a practice. Every minute. Every day. And hold your chin up an inch higher than you normally do, especially when speaking with others.

I asked how such a feisty looking thing didn’t actually have barbs that hurt when I touch it.

She said because I know exactly how to use my resources for success, I can show you.

I asked if she had any experience with the dream realms.

(Proceeds to give me dreams where every time I let someone get away with basically murder to rewrite it in my dreams and sometimes that’s all you need to heal something.)

This is why I love desert flowers. They get to the point, as they know resources are precious, water and comfort is never guaranteed and to do what you can with what you have.

If you read the flower remedy study I did with Pomegranate, the post was much longer. Poetic, and a lot of imagery. She drew it out, gave us a novel.

Desert plants don’t necessarily do that because they have a different energetic architecture. They ask us to change the issue and be done. Their structure is strong, resilient and has no extra furniture, fixtures, decorations. It is like walking into a modern structure where only what you really need is there.

This is where you can start to see what different biomes do, how they interact with our own energetic architecture and how they show us things we didn’t see before. Every single thing down to the atom has a signature, and the farther we move up, through cells, leaves, environments, the weather that surrounds said environment, is where we can start to make sense (not necessarily predict) of the patterns, we can see where our own emotional weather is, how it interacts with what we are using and what the mix will create.

For me personally, the desert isn’t necessarily where I would choose to go if I could choose, but- I am a very watery, emotional, feeling person. I thrive where the ferns thrive, where the mushrooms grow, where the moss is the oracle and mycelium talk under my feet.

For now, I am immersing myself in the desert because my body needs the heat, the movement, the dryness. By nature, I am a Vata-Kapha in Ayurvedic Medicine. My constitution has much to learn from the desert even though I dream of living in the cooler lush woods where I can grow foxglove and fly agaric mushrooms around my 70’s style all wood cabin.

Colorado Hookless Cactus reminds me of the beauty that comes from minimalism. The healing that comes from paying attention to one thing at a time and re-enacting scenarios in dreams so you can react how you really wanted to. This is a tiny flower, but oh, so powerful and she is magnetic, authentic, and knows exactly what her purpose is. She invites us, through her energetic signature, to evoke these properties that lie dormant within each of us.

This has been a simply, yet viscerally affective flower remedy for the season of life I am in right now as a postpartum mother trying to find her way back into the world of herbalism, flower remedies, plant communication and more. This flower remedy is helping me to remember my own personal, unique version of my magic every day in little micro moments.

It is so sweet to work with her, and I have to admit, I was absolutely surprised at how quickly my own mind, body and spirit connected to this plant.