Tuesday 15th
Nick had spotted something
interesting in the dark on our way into town the previous night, so we went to
find it a collossally ancient Taxodium mucronatum.
The trunk diameter must have been 7 or 8m, and although evidently not in
the best of health, recent surgery seemed to have given it a new lease of life.
Could it be 1000 years old? Quite
likely.
Headed out of town on a
dirt track, intending to cross the Parque Nacionale Los Marmoles.
Passed some nice compact Agave striata, really blue, growing along
with Echinocactus platyacanthus. Interestingly
there were naturalised drifts of Kalanchoe tubiflora.
Further long the road, we
encountered some gorgeous yuccas. These
were not very branched, slim trunked with large, grey-green leaves with little
in the way of a filiferous margin. The
description and general look seems to show more affiliation to Yucca
periculosa, but,
with drooping inflorescences, still Yucca filifera?
Who knows. Seems to vary a
lot more on the southern edge of its range than the thousands of hectares of
almost identical clones seen further north.
A little further on, and we
saw a really neat agave, with HUGE, widely spaced bicuspid teeth part of the
Marginatae group but which one? This
road is getting very interesting.
A little further on terrain
became very dry and increasingly steep. We
made our way inside a small tunnel blasted through a rock that would have
otherwise have blocked our way and, on the other side, wondered at a north face
covered in tillandsias, hechtias, Dasylirions which must have been rather
small specimens of D. longissimum, that recently re-applied name to a
rare southern species, and small forms of Agave celsii.
Suddenly Nick spotted something could it possibly? Yes it was - Yucca queretaroensis down in the bottom slopes of the gorge.
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