Since my last post Brooke and I have been very busy collecting seed here in Carlsbad. After a lot of waiting, plants are finally beginning to seed left and right! One of our more interesting collections this month was that of prickly pear and cholla cactus. The thick gloves we had brought to collect with were immediately bombarded  with thousands of tiny glochids and the occasional spine, which often went right through our gloves.

Opuntia engelmannii var. engelmannii fruit we collected + prickly pear pads for pressing!

Cylindropuntia imbricata (cholla) fruit!

Pressing these cactus species for herbarium vouchers was an exciting and challenging task. In order for them to dry out enough, we had to cut the prickly pear and cholla in half, and essentially skin them. This is not easily done and involved glochids everywhere (I’m still finding them stuck to my backpack somehow) as well as several cactus spines to the finger despite our gloves.

Prickly pear ready to be pressed

Cholla!

As we round on our last month of the internship, we have a lot to do and will be mega busy collecting seeds!

-Meridith McClure

Carlsbad, New Mexico BLM