So then on to the Kingston Peak area with some nice scenery and skies...

And a good size Fero for CactusCook. This one was just over 3 feet tall..

A different Opuntia here, Opuntia polyacantha

And a Yucca in flower...

Also started to see plants of the Coryphantha or Escobaria families. Tough to identify without flowers, but probably something like E. vivipara. Good size plants too.

That Opuntia polyacantha is amazing... something like that would be awesome to see in the wild.

But the highlight at this stop for me was seeing some large Echinocactus polycephalus clumps. They were pretty common too, and we'd see a lot more of them as the trip progressed. Shame they are so rarely seen in cultivation here, probably because they can be tough to germinate and get through the first year. (at least that's been my experience)

A youngster just starting to offset...

Another big clump with the remains of flowers and seed pods. Notice too the Echinocereus taking shelter under the front...

And talking of shelter, we've probably heard it all before but seeing is believing - so many plants were growing at the base of a bush or something. Some kind of nursing plant to give the seedling a little shelter and a chance to grow in the extreme conditions. Here's a young Fero under it's bush..

Down the road a little further and we stopped to climb a small rocky hill. An interesting spot where we found some more Escobaria/Echinomastus type plants -

Some wicked spined Echinocereus -

And one of the plants we were looking for, the quite small Mammillaria tetrancistra. Unfortunately we didn't find any in flower which would have been good to see.

A quite nice plant we found here was Agave utahensis. An attractive, compact species.

Fero's on the hillside alongside the track we were walking.



The short walk we'd planned soon turned into a long one as we noticed
some spectacular plants in the distance...so stay tuned for the next episode
!