2/4 Desert Botanical Gardens - Just Cactus Photos

The Desert Botanical Gardens specializes in Sonoran Desert cactus, but they have common and rare cactus and desert plants from all over the world.  Many of their specimens are very old, so they are also very large and impressive.  The fruits on this barrel cactus look almost like flowers.

Another kind of barrel cactus. Look like pin cushions to me.

 

And another one!

And believe it or not, this is a boojam tree.  Very strange looking from Australia. Like most desert plants, it stores water in its trunk and has very few branches or leaves.

I have seen a lot of organ pipe cactus in the desert, but never this large and with this many arms.  I discovered that one reason why they have so many large specimens of this species is that they were donated as rescued plants in 1940.  Wow, they are older than I am!

 

These are cute little cactus bunches.  I think this is a single plant.  It was in a covered nursery area with other smaller samples.

Similar to the one above, but not quite.  There were several similar-looking species in this area.

I have never seen one of these this big.

Can't remember what this little shrubby plant is called,  but I see a lot of it in the desert growing wild.

And a very interesting sundial!

 

 

And here I am, at the very end.  You can tell it was a chilly day because I am wearing a sweatshirt from Death Valley, where it was also very chilly a few weeks ago!