The Cactus Trip Diaries

Another excellent day on the cactus spotting & photography side. Not such good news on the computer front – the image viewer that I use – ACDSee v2,5 Pro refused to work after I left it down loading images using the newly acquired DC converter in the hot car while I was adding more pictures on the even hotter outside. I eventually managed to down load the images using Windows picture downloader, but it does not have the nice feature of renaming the files with their date stamp, which, when using three cameras with synchronised time stamps, comes in very useful in ordering and sorting the images (again over 600 today).

So in desperation I deleted the software and installed V2 that I had still on my HD as a trial version. It says it has just one day left, so we’ll see what happens tomorrow.

The other down side is that the internet connection in the hotel in Monclova does not work from the room that we have this time – can’t remember if it worked last week when we stayed here.

So here is the summary version of today’s events, mainly from memory rather than from a quick review of the images.

We took Mex 30 from Gomez Palacio, through its neighbour Torreon towards Cuatrocienegas, a name that I remember fondly from many January nights selecting orders from Mesa Garden seed lists. We made ten stops S1838 to S1847 incl. and the highlights in descending order were finding Ariocarpus kotschoubeyanus (lots!!!) A. fissuratus (a.k.a. Fizz) (not quite so many), Astrophytum capricorne, here in flower, as if to celebrate Easter Mexican style and again, as if to celebrate Easter or today’s changing of the clocks to Summer time, all the Opuntia seemed to be out in full bloom and rather stole the show. Disappointments were not finding Agave victoria regineae and Lophophora wiliamsii from stops where in the past they had been reported. In the latter case, many holes in the ground might explain where all the plants in the more obvious places might have gone.

There were many more interesting cacti & other succulents, some new to me, to be added to my taxa tick list such as Foquieria shrieve, that has its white flowers along the length of its stems, instead of the traditional cluster at the tips as seen in F. splendens. Some will need some looking up, such as Grusonia bradtiana, which has been moved to one of the other genera when Opuntia was split up. These plants fill the niche that Miquelopuntia miquelii fills in Chile.

A wonderful day that will take several days back in the UK to put into order.

Now let’s hope that tomorrow I can get an internet connection and send this report and some of the pictures.