Only seven vehicles were allowed in. Because my car does not have high clearance, I parked it and joined someone who had a pick-up truck that was better suited for the trip. We did have two White Sands Missile Range employees guide the tour, including the man responsible for the flora on this huge chunk of land. He seems to know every plant and its location!
We did cover almost 120 miles, stopping several times along the way in order to look at the vegatation. Mostly we did explore the plants growing on the hill sides and in the canyons.
Here are some of the cacti that we did encounter.
The first one is most likely an Echinocereus triglochidiatus. We only spotted this one plant, which was hidden in the high grass.
One cactus that is quite common is the Echinocereus coccineus. Here are two images of a nice clump and also some shots of smaller clumps seemingly growing out of rocks.
The next plants are probably Escobaria vivipara. I did not get to write the name down, but I believe, that we were told they were E. vivipara. One of the small cacti did have some damage but was still hanging in there.
One of the true beauties within the cactus world, Echinocereus fendleri (Fendler's hedgehog) was still in bloom.
We also did see two kinds of Cylindropuntia species. The first one is the common cholla (Cylindropuntia imbricata)
The other the Desert Christmas Cactus (Cylindropuntia leptocaulis).
Of the pad-forming Opuntia group there were two members represented that were flowering.
One is the Opuntia phaeacantha, the other Opuntia engelmannii.
The last, and in my opinion the prettiest cactus that we did find, is the beehive cactus or strawberry cactus Echinocereus stramineus. This is the cactus I had accidentally put my hand into, when I fell during my field trip to Orogrande, New Mexico, where we went in order to see the naturally occuring Echinocereus hybrids. Most of the plants had already bloomed, but three of the mounds did still have flowers on them. I must say, that I was mightily impressed by the size (8-9 cm or 3-3 1/2 inches in diameter) of the blossoms and also their brilliance. The hot pink flowers seemed to be glowing. Although I do not have a specimen of this plant, this one definitely would be worth acquiring.
I am told by a cactus club member, that the plant, despite its huge size in nature, is a slow grower. So I would not see a mound of the sizes pictured, unless I lived to be 100 years old.
Well, here are some images. The first one shows a mound with only one blossom. I photographed it, because the arrangement of the stems was not circular, as a result of a near vertical wall of rock next to the cactus.
This field trip also yielded a good number of images of wildflowers and shrubs and trees native to the Chihuahuan Desert. It was difficult though to photograph the wildflowers, because the constant brisk wind whipped the stems around and getting the image into focus was not easily accomplished.
Harald
