Tucson Botanical Garden - January 2015

I’ve already posted about the butterflies and poison dart frogs at the Tucson Botanical Garden. Today the post is mostly about cactus! I am always fascinated by how alien cactus sometimes looks. Their flowers look like they don’t belong nestled in thorns or atop smooth surfaced succulents. And what about the ones that look hairy? Sometimes the thorns are unusual colors - or several different colors. Sometimes the ribs stand out - sometimes the plant looks like a cushion - or a long stem that flops over. One non-cactus in the slide show below is the very last image. Can your guess what it is?

A pomegranate! The tree had several dried fruits on it. Another non-cactus was a net-leaf hackberry. I know this one only because there was a sign. The leaves were gone but I was fascinated by the bark.