DryStoneGarden

Cerro Colorado in the distance with Volcan las Tres Virgenes beyond it

I mentioned that we started bicycling from San Ignacio, an oasis town about half way down the Baja peninsula. Before we started riding, we spent a few days exploring the desert and checking out the plants there, and especially checking out the succulents on Cerro Colorado, a volcanic hill a few kilometers from town.

Closer to the hill

If you’re interested in succulents, Cerro Colorado is the place. The Center for Sonoran Desert Studies/Desert Museum did a survey and found 44 unique species, which they claim is the highest number of succulent species of any spot in the southwestern U.S. Would that then make it the highest number of any spot in the world? I don’t know, but there’s a ton of succulents there, regardless. Anita and I did our own personal survey and identified 19, which we’ll obviously have to improve before we can start leading botanical bicycle tours of Baja (now accepting reservations for winter 2031). Looking at the species list for the hill, I see that it broadly defines a succulent as just about any plant that has tissue designed for storing water. The list includes a couple of Asclepias species and a bunch of caudiciform shrubs and vines: cucumber relatives, shrubby euphorbias, a wild fig, and two species of elephant trees (Bursera). Some of those are plants I wouldn’t have considered succulents, but then I’m not a botanist, and with 24 species of cactus, it’s not exactly lacking in conventional succo’s.

Organ Pipe and Cardon

Cardones

More Cardones

Barrel Cactus

I think these are two different species of barrel cactus. I lost track of all the chollas. We could tell there were several different types, but the desert museum lists eight, including hybrids. A couple were jumpers.

Cholla and Barrel Cactus

Slipper Plant, Pedilanthus macrocarpus

Fouquieria Trunk with Cardon Trunk

Fouquieria Trunk with Organ Pipe

Agave cerulata subcerulata

It’s probably the spiniest place I’ve ever been, but plants are spaced far enough apart that we could make our way through it as long as we occasionally pulled spiny branches out of our way. I found that walking with all those spines everywhere kept my attention always focused on my immediate area and each plant immediately in front of me, so that I was constantly looking up to discover yet another awesome specimen in front of me, over and over and over.

Elephant Tree, Bursera microphylla

Elephant trees get the nod as my favorite plant down there. Has anyone seen or grown one in the Bay Area?

Red Elephant Tree, Bursera hindsiana

This is probably the best trunk I saw on a Red Elephant Tree while I was down there.

Limberbush, Jatropha cuneata, in the Euphorbia family

There were two kinds of Jatropha. The other one, J. cinerea, looks a lot like the mexican redbud, but with somewhat swollen-looking branches and twigs.

Palo Verde

The hill had great palo verdes. They aren’t a succulent, but they have chlorophyl and photosynthesize on their wood, which seems like justification for getting in with the succulent photos.

Palo Verde

Cerro Colorado from the bridge near San Ignacio

Bristlecone Pine

While I was out on the east side, I visited the Schulman Grove of Bristlecone Pines in the White Mountains. Bristlecone Pines are the famous “oldest trees in the world,” and, checking them out in person, I found they have a suitably amazing presence. They grow on a very dry, barren mountainside, sometimes with other plants — mountain mahogany, sage (Salvia and Artemisia), penstemon, thistle, paintbrush, lupine — but with the oldest ones growing in pure stands of gnarled, low-growing, ancient trees. There is a four mile loop trail that passes through the grove that has the Methuselah Tree, the oldest tree on earth at almost 5,000 years old, though it’s not disclosed which one is the actual Methusaleh, the forest service keeps its identity secret and doesn’t let anyone publish any photos of it. (There was an older one, Prometheus, but it was cut down by a scientist, and a NOVA program about the bristlecones claims that someone has found another one older than Methusaleh; the NOVA link has some cool interactive photos.) They are concerned that people would walk close to it and cause erosion, risking it health as erosion is apparently what eventually finishes these trees. They survive lightning strikes, pests, drought, etc., but in 5,000 years on the side of a dry, sandy mountainside, they’re going to see some serious erosion. Living 5,000 years, they’re not even on tree time, they’re starting to be on geologic time.

The most striking feature is how much dead wood they have. One 4,000 year old tree has a four foot diameter trunk with only a ten inch wide strip of living wood. And even after the wood dies, it doesn’t rot. Scientists have found wood that is 9,000 years old; they used the tree rings on these trees to calibrate the process of carbon dating, they are literally the standard by which we determine how old things are. Which makes sense, as there is something almost archaeological about the grove. Serious patience and endurance; these trees abide.

Bristlecone Pine

Bristlecone Forest

There’s a nice photo from the Schulman grove in photographer Rachel Sussman’s project the oldest living things in the world. She also has photos of redwoods, alerces, a 400,000 year old bacteria, an “underground forest,” and clonal trees like aspens where the genetic material is 80,000 years old. Bristlecone and redwood photos are always cool, but I think the best photos in the series are of the plants I’ve never heard of, the ones that are not visually impressive but have been unobtrusively living for thousands of years. (Hat tip: Studio G)

Another photo of a bristlecone and a few other old trees is at the blog for friendsoftrees.org.

— Somewhat off topic, but I feel like bookmarking the link, a slideshow of the world’s most famous trees includes a bristlecone.

Sagebrush Country

Most of my time on the eastside, I was camped on the edge of the sagebrush sea that stretches from the Sierras across the Great Basin to Utah. It was a good opportunity to get to know that plant community. I’ve seen it and driven through it and even planted the namesake plant, Big Sage aka Great Basin Sage (Artemisia tridentata), in several gardens including my own, but I hadn’t really camped or hiked or spent an extended amount of time in it. It’s an interesting plantscape. Flat for the most part, with almost no trees, and the soil is loose and sandy and not for any plant that needs to be well fed or water-fat. The sun is strong, even though the actual temperatures stayed moderate because of the altitude, and there was almost always wind, especially in the evenings because I was at the base of a mountain. There were monsoon rains a lot of the time I was out there, storm clouds building during the afternoon and then briefly dropping rain somewhere on the landscape, frequently with a double or triple rainbow somewhere. Rains were still T-shirt weather, and the high desert smelled amazing afterwards. Sagebrush is one of those smells that evokes an entire landscape.

Snowberry, Bitterbrush, Sagebrush

Most of what you see of the sagebrush in the photo is actually its bloom stalks. Sagebrush is wind-pollinated, so it doesn’t need a big, showy flower and it doesn’t care about attracting pollinators. The foliage is beautiful enough to make up for the lack of flowers, though. We made a tea with it one night and seasoned potatoes with it on another, and it smells nice in campfires or as smudge sticks. I usually think of silver foliage as an accent or contrast for green foliage, but silver is the dominant color in sage country and it is the greens that act as compliments.

Blazing Star, Mentzelia

A few other plants — Blazing Star, Prickly Poppy, and Sulfur Buckwheat — provided the showy flowers. The spiny, weedy foliage of the blazing stars and prickly poppies would probably keep them out of most gardens, but their flowers are fantastic.

Blazing Star, Mentzelia

Prickly Poppy, Argemone

Prickly Poppy, Argemone

Sulfur Buckwheat, Eriogonum umbellatum

Sage at Convict Lake

“The Sagebrush Sea (scientifically known as “sagebrush steppe”) covers approximately 110 million acres of the American West, making it one of the most extensive landscapes in North America. The heart of the Sagebrush Sea is shaped by the Columbia River Basin, the Great Basin, the Wyoming Basin and the Colorado Plateau.” More info, including details about conservation efforts and some cool maps, can be found at SagebrushSea.org.

Sagebrush Sea, from SagebrushSea.org

Sierra Lily, Lilium kelleyanum

I was up in the east side at a great time for wildflowers. One area that really impressed me was at Agnew Meadows in Devil’s Postpile National Monument. In one place — a boggy meadow beside a stream — I counted a dozen different wildflowers in full bloom within a twenty foot radius, and I was impressed at how well the colors all complimented each other, purples and blues contrasted with yellows. I saw the same flowers growing together in various combinations at many of the other meadows and streamsides in the monument and in the national forest, but because they were all present at once in Agnew I started to think of them as the Agnew Meadows wildflower mix, as if it were a seed company’s wildflower packet. For a moist cottage garden at high elevation, I reckon you couldn’t do much better.
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