Today was a day of shortstops centred on various Arrojadoa species as we crossed from the State of Minas Gerais into Bahia, Marlon’s birth State. Sadly, no flowers, so A. rhodantha and A. albiflora, at different locations, looked identical! And loads of Melocacti, but I had seen them all in 2009 when it had been drier, so less vegetation for them to hide behind.
At S3680 we saw Arrojadoa rhodantha. As regular readers of these Diaries will know, I am colourblind and I struggle with naming the flower colour of Arrojadoa flowers such as A. penicilata, A. rhodantha, A. marylaniae and the new species that we’ll see in days to come. To my eyes, these taxa have flower colours that to my eyes look the same, yet the literature uses different names for the (same?) colour. Here is Arrojadoa rhodantha in flower:
The New Cactus Lexicon call this flower colour for this taxon pinkish magenta or reddish-pink.
S3681 gave us Arrojadoa eriocaulis or A. dinae subsp. eriocaulis if you prefer but no flowers.
And the Pilosocereus are soooooo blue, it makes your eyes hurt!
S3682 again suggests Arrojadoa rhodantha, but again, no flowers.
Above: S3683 a good example of what causes the confusion between A. eriocaulis and A dinae.
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And to cap it all, we saw a monstrous Pilosocereus! Just the one!
In Jacaraci, every restaurant was closed due to it being Sunday. But there was a kiosk on the square opposite the hotel, that was open and where they sold a range of foods, so I had a number of sticks with barbequed meats and, a Chocolate pizza! Willing to give anything a try, it turned out to be a pizza base covered thickly in chocoladehagelslag! The chocolate was slowly melting into the base. It was actually very nice and, as it was much larger than the size indicated by the young lad serving, a bit too much, so the others helped me out. It has been added to my wishlist for pancake day!
The Cactus Trip Diaries 
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