Observaciones de tchester

An absolutely enormous stand of R. trilobata! I've seen thickets of it before, but nothing like this. The road was apparently cut through this massive stand.

See the satellite view in the map here to see how extensive this stand is.

An absolutely enormous stand of R. trilobata! I've seen thickets of it before, but nothing like this. The road was apparently cut through this massive stand.

See the satellite view in the map here to see how extensive this stand is.

Also see Don's closeup view:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/208041693

for which he paid the heavy price of getting grass stickers in his socks.

The same bush has been putting on a spectacular display, seen while driving on S2, for at least 12 years! See:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/208219971

This young plant doesn't look very happy. Nearly all the ocotillo plants we saw on this trip had at least some leaves present.

This was a repeat observation of a plant measured four months earlier, in December 2023. It was unchanged from then, with no new growth.

Repeat observation of a plant called #2 in our webpage on ocotillo recruitment:

https://tchester.org/bd/species/fouquieriaceae/recruitment.html

The post from 3 December 2023:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/193559424

Observations from this 16 April 2024 trip:

2 flowering stems.

stem 1 has a new segment 3 3/4" long plus an infl of length 8". Segment #2, the one below the new segment was 19", segment 3 was 8", segment 4 was 5.5". The measurements for segments 2, 3 and 4 were the same as measured in December 2023, confirming that the new growth occurred in the last four months.

stem 2 youngest segment 10.5", then 7", 9.5", 9.5", with 8.5 inches of infl. These are roughly the same as measurements made in December, but with some variance apparently due to exactly where we judged a segment to end. We had a similar discrepancy for this stem on another December trip. When we returned to this stem on the second December visit, we found it was not abundantly clear where the segments began and ended.

There was new growth on other stems of 7.5", and 5.5".

This plant had ten stems total, including short ones.