James ⛰️🌾🇵🇸

No hand lens, just vibes

Also I meant that within Death Valley NP it only occurs in the panamint Mtn range. It’s fairly common across SoCal and the Sonoran

I’m glad you enjoy them! The deserts out west are a whole nother world to discover, and the mountains hold so many secrets. Some hold the oldest trees in the world, others crashed military planes, and some just have sheep judging hikers

Desert mountains/hills have been on my mind

But cacti are honestly very tricky and I still have a lot to learn about them, but these are just my thoughts on them.

Here’s a comparison also of O. polycantha (var. erinacea I believe) and O. basilaris var basilaris

Also O. basilaris isn’t very big, this individual I saw would be the biggest opuntia I’ve seen if it wasn’t a cultivar, which I thought at first since I was at a ghost town.

In my experience working in Death Valley across the pinyon juniper ecosystem it was common to see O. polycantha (sorta looks like a ghost with how many spines it has, and also not very large in size). I wouldn’t normally see the other Opuntia, basilaris which has like no spines, at this elevation

4+ years in the Mojave and I’m still learning new plants 😵‍💫

Saw an opuntia I didn’t recognize yesterday in the Panamints, turned out to be Opuntia phaeacantha in one of the most extremely isolated populations that only occur on the Panamint Mtn Range (the three blue dots on a green patch with no other blue dots near it)

Panamint City

You could say I was surprised

Girl the OSHA violations

God I love it here

Climb the fence and say hi!!

Climb the fence and say hi!!

Lake Mead

I would like to frolic by the water again

We were doing Astragalus geyeri var. triquetrus (rare plant) surveys in incredibly sandy areas, and to make sure plants counted weren’t counted again we circled the sand around them

Drawing circles in the sand at work yesterday (for conservation)

If your network isn’t discussing cone maxxing, intentionally moving up the mountain, or rapidly growing after wild fires, then you need to find a new circle. Your network is your net worth

Lake mead has a chaotic energy surrounding it

Can’t seem to stay away from these fields

First week back with the parks and I’m about to head out to rescue some stranded scientists in Death Valley 🥰

If they want me back they have to go fully Woke 2, sorry. Whole hog. I gotta be able to get an abortion there

Do not be a perfectionist yall

I am teaching 2-3 Mojave desert plant trainings and I am stressed

This is why it's not enough for Congress to just appropriate funds to scientific agencies. How the funds are or are not spent and when they are spent needs to be enforced.

The administration is playing games with our taxpayer dollars, when they should be going towards scientific innovation.

Within the last day or two things have really exploded around the desert

I’m going to carry so many puzzle items in here