CactiGuide.com

There are over 600 cactus in habitat images to process so I'm trying to batch resize them down in Photoshop.
Testing...first image of first batch

Okay that worked....lots more to come soon. The drive was 704 miles round trip staying overnight. Roughly 1123 km.

Looking south and west from a limestone ridge where many of the species of cacti were present. On the valley floor mostly cholla were present.

The species which I could ID are: Ferocactus acanthodes, Cylindropuntia echinocarpa- Silver cholla, Echinocereus engelmannii, Echinomastus johnsonii, Mammillaria tetrancistra, Opuntia engelmannii, maybe this one -Opuntia erinacea, and Escobaria vivipara desertii.

Also present were the Joshua trees - Yucca brevifolia, Agave utahensis and perhaps a couple more yucca or agave species I didn't recognize.

And more pics...

Please chime in with questions or comments. I'll do my best in response.

more pics

About a mile south of the previous canyon. This terrain opened up into an alluvial plain or wash. Joshua trees and Cholla were about as abundant on the flat land as are the Ferocactus on the south facing hillsides.

Ferocactus and opuntia grew into the limestone hills. My thought is seed dispersion via birds is the main way they got established here. Then gravity, rainfall and wind did the rest. The ferocactus are nicknamed compass or miner's cactus because they point south. But they point south for other reasons, primarily for the best sun exposure- the most in winter and least in high summer. Simplest explanation.

As far as variation among the species of ferocactus goes...my observations lead me to think it's somewhat random. Spination color differences were what I saw. From mostly rich pink or red if you want to call it red to creamy yellow with some being a mix of red and yellow.

a few more...

Next morning...

What area are you in exactly? (I've been thinking about getting out into the desert and am not exactly which areas are the interesting ones)

Shane wrote: ↑Fri Jan 22, 2021 6:14 am What area are you in exactly? (I've been thinking about getting out into the desert and am not exactly which areas are the interesting ones)

This particular adventure took place in the SW corner of Utah...bordering AZ and NV. I was about 15 miles from each state. St. George is the nearest city. The exact area for this hike was in or near the Beaver Dam Wash National Conservation Area right next to Shivwits Paiute Indian Reservation....which is private property.

My home is in the southern end of the Salt Lake Valley near Salt Lake City.

The BLM maps are a good guide to where one can go on public lands. It's color coded to make it easy for anyone to figure out what is public, private, federal, state, National Park, Conservation Areas and such.

https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files ... oomMap.pdf

There are wild cactus growing 5 minutes from my house and the variety of species increases with distance especially southwards.

Some sites are popular tourist or outdoor recreation areas or one can research to find the roads less traveled for solitude. Kind of amazing to be somewhere and see no one with no noise except bugs, birds and breezes....and at night coyotes yodeling. Works for me.

Mojave is a spectacular desert I often go to the southern part not as many cactus as the Sonoran Desert but it has a wilder look, more rock and more colors. Cactus from there are usually pretty hard to grow in greenhouses outside of the desert.

That Joshua tree forest is my favorite place in Utah

RyManUtah wrote: ↑Sun Jan 24, 2021 4:14 pm That Joshua tree forest is my favorite place in Utah

Near the end of my hike on the second day I was driving back towards Old hiway 91 and on the right was a draw, wash, gulley or whatever you prefer to call it. And from the base of the peak to the road was such a forest or Joshua trees. So I stopped and hiked it. An old miner's camp or something was evidenced there also. Very old rusted steel cans, sardine or meat tins and purple glass. The clues weren't enough for me to correctly deduce any other possibility except prospector's passing through?

This is where I saw two specimens of Mammilaria tetrancistra and a few large and small Echinomastus johnsonii.

I have a bunch more images to go through and will post those this week.
I stopped at the Sunset Star nursery on my way back to Salt Lake. They told me the end of Feb or early March will see a lot more new I inventory coming to the nursery . Sounds like a road trip to me.

Nice hike, Steve! Enjoying your habitat photos.

Liked those Agave utahensis plants you shut there. My potted plant also loses dry some of the old leaves regularly, maybe this is normal for some of the plants anyway.