The Cactus Trip Diaries

Today’s explorations were along the track from MEX 1 to Santa Martha. I have written up a full text for today’s report, but it’s on the other laptop that has a battery that’s flat in seconds.

So for now – some pictures – with the relevant text below.

Today’s activities continue the theme of this short venture into Baja California, to seek out some Dudleya at locations reported in Reid Moran’s Field Books and to explore for Dudleya in the area around such finds in the hope that developments since Reid Moran’s explorations from the 1940s through to the 1980’s have not destroyed some of these locations. It is just as likely that new developments may have opened the area, so that places that were previously inaccessible can now be reached in the comfort of an air conditioned 4×4. In short, we’re on a Dudleyathon.

The Field Books suggest that he did not botanize in the area around Santa Martha in the Sierra San Francisco and so the track from Mex 1 to Santa Martha (a collections of half a dozen homes with a number of small farms along the track) was the subject of today’s outing. My eyes were playing up again, despite a pair of goggle-like sunglasses that fit over my prescription glasses, so we only made some brief stops for plants along the side of the track. Cactus and other succulent plant vegetation wise there was nothing that we did not see already in 2008 along the track farther north, to San Borja.

All pictures today are recorded as S2214 and the only note as an addition to the 2008 plant list is that the Agave with the banded pattern on its leaves is A. cerulata. As we got back at a reasonable time and I had only taken 56 pics I include a small selection of images taken today.   This rare treat is specially for Alain, to show him that it’s the author and not the software that is to blame for the relative lack of images. In Chile and Argentina, Juan would make up for this by posting his pictures on his Flickr site. Perhaps Eunice should be encouraged to do the same.