The Cactus Trip Diaries

Marlon had scheduled just one stop, S3753, while pictures taken from the car are filed under S3752.

S3752 took us off the BR-251 into Eucalyptus forest. After a while we stopped along the track and Marlon went to explore. He had been here some three weeks before we arrived with Leo van der Hoeven and Gerardus Altshoorn. Since then, the wet season had started and the abundant rain here had transformed the dry clearings between the trees into a shrub filled forest of shrubs in leaf, dripping with water. Although the rain had stopped for now, as we touched a tree or moved a branch, we got a good soaking.

Eventually we reached a clearing where Marlon pointed out an Arrojadoa. In 2009, we had been shown A. dinae subsp. eriocaulis var. albicoronata in the park at Grao Mogol where we had hoped to see Discocactus horstii. A few years ago, Leo had found the plants here and, finding them distinct from the plants at Grao Mogol, called these plants Arrojadoa hoevenii n.n. Leo had been growing these plants in the Netherlands and in England and had given me one of each. Too me, they did not look different. Neither did the plants here look different from the plants at Grao Mogol, not to me and not to Marlon who, as a result, had declined Leo’s invitation to publish a formal description.

I’ve forgotten the name of the small Discocactus that grows here too, on dark rocks, rich in iron.