A Prickly Garden of Delights

In what will be the last in a series of posts on our trip to Baja California (I promise!), I thought I'd offer a few examples of the astonishing diversity of plant life found along the peninsula, the vast majority endemic to the region (80 of the 110 cactus species found in Baja grow nowhere else on the planet). The lack of development on Isla Espiritu Santo meant we were able to witness vast unfolding areas of untouched ecological wonder. My growing familiarity with the vegetation of the Southwestern deserts of the United States left me unprepared for this new array of plants. While San Diego's deserts hosts a few groves of elephant trees, Baja's plains and hills are covered with them. The varieties of cholla far outstrip the Colorado Desert's selection. And what look like saguaros were actually a completely different species, the cardon. I ended up snapping as many photos as possible, pestering our tour guide for names, and looking up images later. Here are just a handful of images of the uniquely adapted trees, shrubs and cacti we enjoyed during our island stay.