Cactus Trip through the US South West

The problem with a trip like this is there's a schedule you need to keep to in order to see as much as possible...If we had have had a couple of hours to wait, I'm sure these would have been out later that morning..

Different angle...

And a multiheaded plant. Who wouldn't want that in their collection ??

And there were other Cacti here too..mostly Opuntias..

We took a 15 minute drive out of our way to get the classic "Monument Valley with gunbarrel straight Highway" shot !

Then off into New Mexico where within sight of Shiprock we were on the hunt for another Sclerocactus...

Oops, dead end ! But while the road may stop, Cactus hunters don't! And amongst the rubbish being dumped under the power lines were growing Sclerocactus mesae verdae.

What here ? I hear you say ???

Yup, here !

A nice big plant. This was one of the most endangered spots we visited, with all the people using the power line access road etc as a dumping ground, it's unlikely these plants will be here much longer....

Next stop, just outside Bloomfield where we were lucky enough to catch the Sclerocactus whipplei in flower.

Great little plants... This locality was actually quite a cactus hotspot and was right alongside a picnic ground, making access easy...

Intense colours...

Also here, amongst the many Sclero's was a single flowering plant of Escobaria vivipara. Impressive as all the others we'd seen were no where near flowering...

And Echinocereus fendleri made an appearance...

Another nice whipplei a bit further out of town....

The next day saw us spending the morning investigating Mesa Gardens, the well know C & S seed supplier and then it was on to the Soccoro area. Finding some suitable roads off the highway that seemed to lead to likely areas we stopped for a quick look around...

Here we found some impressive Echinomastus...

Some very nice Echinocereus...

And some spectacular Echinocereus !

Next morning saw us doing the touristy thing at White Sands National Monument, where you guessed it, there's lots of white sand !

But also the biggest and maybe one of the best looking forms of Echinocereus triglochiadatus ! Toumeya is said to grow here, but after a couple of hours searching we couldn't find it. They are hard at the best of times, but it had been dryer than usual this season, so we console ourselves in that being the reason for our failure!



Stay tuned, some real gems to come soon !

All these Echinocereus are seriously rugged-looking plants. I like 'em.

Our next stop was another "hot spot" in the Anthonys Gap area in New Mexico. This was interesting as there were a number of different genera, the Opuntia and Echinocereus on the flats and as you went over the ridge a whole other group appeared..