Cactus Trip through the US South West

Down the road a little further and we stopped to climb a small rocky hill. An interesting spot where we found some more Escobaria/Echinomastus type plants -

Some wicked spined Echinocereus -

And one of the plants we were looking for, the quite small Mammillaria tetrancistra. Unfortunately we didn't find any in flower which would have been good to see.

A quite nice plant we found here was Agave utahensis. An attractive, compact species.

Fero's on the hillside alongside the track we were walking.



The short walk we'd planned soon turned into a long one as we noticed
some spectacular plants in the distance...so stay tuned for the next episode
!

loveing these photos and i will definately stay tuned... i realy like seeing these plants in the wild

thanks for the shots Nava

Moving right along...
Off in the distance we could see some big plants with massive flower spikes on them. It was a fair hike but well worth it as who knows when you might see something like this again ?

Nolina parryi or the "Giant Nolina"...These were big plants with huge flower stalks... a little reminiscent of our Xanthorrheas perhaps, just heftier!

You might just be able to make out our car, midway down on the left...

More Mammillaria tetrancistra up here as well, this time with fruit...

So we walked back down to the car, and we hit the road again. Now we were looking for one specific plant that we'd been given GPS info for...and why just this one plant ? Because it was a crested Fero!

I kind of like to call it the "bum" plant!

The next day we checked out a National park and racked up some miles heading for our next area to investigate. We then found ourselves in the Kiabab forest area, where a number of interesting plants can be found. Firstly some nice examples of Coryphantha (Escobaria) vivipara v. kaibabensis, but alas none in flower...

This area really wasn't what you'd think of as prime cactus country. More forest than desert...

But good Cactus country it is, and this is what we were looking for Pediocactus paradinei

We had to be very careful also as these plants were tough to see and easy to stand on if you weren't careful...

After finding a good many with buds and as the Sun climbed higher in the sky, the challenge was on to find an open flower, and in the end we succeeded !

And another, complete with photographers shadow...DOH!

Here you can see a Pediocactus surrounded by three Corys. And although the Corys may look different, they are most likely the same species but at different stages of life. The multiheaded one has probably been damaged at some stage...

It's not a very long drive off the Kaibab plateau to the Marble Canyon area which looks a lot more like cactus country..

So we stopped by the canyon to search for another Pediocactus.

One of my favorites (although I have many favorites) Pediocactus bradyi.

But there were other cacti here as well, more of the Echinocactus polycephalus.

I have never seen Echinocactus polycephalus available here.. nor have I seen seed. That last photo shows a terrific specimen