Bibliography on peyote / Lophophora

Lately I've been working on a bibliography that is meant to cover literature on primarily peyote/Lophophora and related Mexican/Texan cactus species, but many general works on cacti are also included. Currently the bibliography is very much a work in progress and will be expanded in the future. Download links are included for works that are publicly available.

The bibliography resides on a stand-alone page (and as such is not included in the blog post feed, hence this announcement:): Bibliography on peyote / Lophophora

Gingerbread peyote cookies

Gingerbread peyote cookie

Yuletide is closing in and the winter solstice has to be celebrated. What better way to do it than with a handful of homemade gingerbread peyote cookies :-)


Gingerbread peyote cookies - a.k.a christmas cactus cookies :-)

Merry winter solstice to you all. And happy new growing season!

Huichol peyote picking under threat

Huichol looking over the desert - photo by Tracy L. Barnett

The Huichol not only have to deal with threats to their sacred land by the Canadian-based mining company First Majestic Silver Corporation. According to the Guadalajara Reporter a recent presidential decree also outlaws harvesting of peyote in two protected areas in San Luis Potosi, partly prohibiting the ancient Huichol pilgrimages that revolve around peyote picking.

The full Guadalajara Reporter article reads:

Not only is their sacred land threatened by Canadian mining corporations, but the indigenous Huichol or Wixarika of Jalisco and Nayarit’s Sierra Madre must now also contend with the Mexican government undermining their peyote-infused religious rituals.

One of four Wixarika deities, peyote is considered a means of communicating with the gods, and for thousands of years the Wixarika have embarked on pilgrimages to pick the hallucinogenic cactus flower in the mountainous “Wirikuta” area of Real de Catorce in San Luis Potosi.

But a presidential decree issued on October 26 partly prohibited this ancient tradition by outlawing the harvest of fruit from two protected areas in San Luis Potosi.

At a press conference last week, the Regional Council for the Defense of Wirikuta, demanded that the government guarantee their right to pick peyote. The council also called for the cancellation of 79 mining concessions affecting their sacred land.

Since 2009, the Wixarika have been campaigning against mining concessions granted by the Mexican government to Canadian firms. The mining has a devastating impact on the local environment, critics say, with swaths of land destroyed and large quantities of cyanide used in the process.

Huichol pilgrimage becomes fight for spiritual survival

It saddens me to see that the Huichol still have to fight for their right to their sacred areas. Areas that are threatened by a mining concession granted by Mexico's government to Canada-based First Majestic Silver Corporation.

Earlier this year the Huichol, as part of their yearly pilgrimage, staged a protest against the Mexican government’s decision to allow First Majestic Silver Corporation to exploit the area.


Huicholes protesting in Guadalajara

The Guadalajara Reporter had the following to say on the subject:

With their ancestral homeland in danger of destruction at the hands of a Canadian mining company, the indigenous Huichol people used their annual pilgrimage to stage a rally in defense of their sacred territory last week.

Counting on support from their gods (as well as local media and human rights organizations), the Wixaritari, as the Huichol people traditionally call themselves, embarked upon a spiritual and political journey with the aim of drawing national attention to their predicament.

Mexico’s 28,000 Wixaritari are natives of a mountainous area where northern Jalisco, eastern Nayarit, southern Durango and western Zacatecas all intersect. They originated in Wirikuta, the Huichol name for Cerro del Quemado, in Real de Catorce, San Luis Potosi. This is a sacred area for the Wixaritari, where it is said the Sun God, “Tao Jreeku,” created the world.

Every year, hundreds of Wixaritari walk almost 500 kilometers to Wirikuta to pray, leave religious offerings and perform “Mitote” ceremonies with peyote, the sacred hallucinogenic cactus. Considered a magical means of communicating with the gods, peyote is an important part of Wixaritari culture and only they are legally allowed to gather or possess the cactus.

This year 800 pilgrims left their communities at the beginning of the month, arriving en masse on February 6. Normally the separate communities from different states arrive apart, but this year they coordinated their pilgrimages so as to arrive together and draw greater attention.

Attended by numerous special guests – including representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner, musicians, journalists and dozens of notable non-governmental organizations and human rights groups – the event was intended to protest the Mexican government’s decision to allow a Canadian mining company to exploit the area.

In November 2009, Vancouver-based First Majestic Silver Corporation bought 22 concessions from the Mexican government to explore and develop mineral deposits in a 6,327-hectare area of the Real de Catorce region. Around 70 percent of the land falls inside the sacred Wirikuta area.

In 1999, UNESCO designated this site as a protected area for its importance as a cultural route and for its endemic flora and fauna species. The mining project not only infringes on sacred and protected land, but also threatens the region’s eco-system, through potential cyanide contamination and the over-exploitation of local water resources.

As the Wixaritari spiritual authorities put it, “the problem of mining is so great that we cannot solve it physically, we need the help of the gods.”

Their political and religious leaders presented a ten-point manifesto demanding government support, calling for peaceful resistance against the mining operations, in order to defend “what for us is the essence of life,” and thanking the “universities, media and society that have supported us,” because “it made us feel we are not alone in this fight.”

While the federal government has shown very little interest in their concerns and First Majestic has aggressively pushed ahead with its plans, the Wixaritari have received some local backing, through the work of human rights organizations and publicity in the local media.

This week the Human Rights Commission of Jalisco (CEDHJ) reiterated its support for the Wixaritari in their struggle against exploitation. The CEDHJ said it is working with its national counterpart to identify potential human rights violations against the Wixaritari, who inhabit the municipalities of Mezquitic, Huejuquilla, Villa Guerrero, Chimaltitan, and Bolaños in Jalisco’s northern highlands.

Much of the Wixaritari anger has been directed at the government, as President Felipe Calderon has reneged on the Huauxca Manaka Pact he witnessed in 2008, when indigenous leaders and the governors of five states vowed to protect the holy places of the Wixaritari.

As a result, the Wixaritari now face the threat of spiritual extermination, in addition to the existing problems of poverty, hunger, marginalization and drought. The destruction of their sacred homeland would be a large step towards wiping out their very identity.

But in a world where the market rules, ancient culture is only considered a meaningful commodity if it brings in tourism, as the ancient Mayan civilization does for Mexico. Wixaritari culture, on the other hand, does not – hence the government’s complete indifference to their plight.

The ongoing dispute is an example of the dark legacy of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which significantly eased restrictions on foreign corporations operating in Mexico. Highly profitable companies such as First Majestic can expect to receive large federal grants to exploit Mexico’s resources, while simultaneously damaging the environment and destroying ancient indigenous culture.

This is not the first time NAFTA has caused tension between the government and Mexico’s indigenous population. The Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas in 1994 was a result of the Mexican government signing away the land rights of indigenous campesinos to foreign corporations.

Under the terms of NAFTA, the government removed Article 27 Section VII of the Mexican Constitution, which had previously guaranteed land reparations to indigenous groups throughout Mexico. This right to land had been the principal gain of the Mexican Revolution.

Mongolian wildflowers

I’m recently back from a journey that took me through Russia, Mongolia, China, Tibet, and Nepal (and I’m aware that China considers Tibet an “autonomous region” of China and not a nation in its own right; that China “liberated” Tibet 60 years ago. But nobody - absolutely nobody in their right mind and not brainwashed by the chinese dictatorship - can see the ruthless chinese oppression of Tibet as anything else than a blatant occupation! More on that in an upcoming post).

I visited Russia (Siberia) during very early spring and my photos from that part of the trip mainly boils down to those of leafless birch trees; so I’ll skip Russia and jump straight to Mongolia in this floristic travelogue ;-) I’m in the unfortunate situation that I don’t know the names of most of the plants featured in this post so any help is appreciated ;-)


Cream flowers


Yellow flowers


Light blue / lilac flowers

After spending some days in Ulan Bator (Ulaanbaatar), the capital and largest city of Mongolia, we set out for Gorkhi-Terelj National Park. It was still early spring but a few plants were flowering, including the cream, yellow, and light blue/lilac flowered plants pictured above. Especially the latter was abundant, in many places almost covering the grassy slopes with its beautiful flowers.

My expectations to Gorkhi-Terelj involved imagery of serene, unperturbed nature allowing for days of pure trekking bliss ;-) However the “developed” part of the park we visited is on the verge of being destroyed by golf courts, tourist ger camps, ubiquitous signs and posters, road construction, housing development, and the like. In their eagerness to attract more visitors the very soul of what people are coming to see are being destroyed. It’s a big shame.

That being said it’s still possible to find undisturbed spots among the rolling, grassy hills and beautiful rock formations (in many ways reminding of the monzogranite formations at Joshua Tree National Park) where you can get a sense of being in the wilderness. If you are of an imaginative temperament it’s not even hard to envision Genghis Khan (Chinggis Khaan) galloping across the steppes; otherwise you can go see the (quite clumsy and ugly, yet colossal) Genghis Khan monument ;-)


A few of the ubiquitous signs and posters


Road construction near Turtle Rock

Another plant that is abundant in Terelj is (what I take to be) Orostachys spinosa, a cold-tolerant alpine native to Siberia and Mongolia. Its fleshy leaves are arranged in a rosette, growing to 10 cm (4'') in diameter at maturity. The plant is said to be able to survive extreme freezing temperatures down to -40°C. I collected a few of these plants in the hope to grow them on my balcony here in Copenhagen, but unfortunately most of them died off in a storage room in Kathmandu - one small plant is still alive though, so I keep my hopes high ;-)


A cluster of Orostachys spinosa

Back in Ulan Bator the only plants we could find were made of plastic. At first I found it a bit strange to have outdoor plastic flower arrangements in a park, but it seemed like a common practice.


Red plastic flowers


Yellow plastic flowers

Peyote flowers - fisheye/tilt-shift photography

Flowering Lophophora williamsii - tilt-shift

I just got me a Lensbaby Composer lens and of course had to experiment taking pictures of some of my flowering peyote plants. Even though the subject line mentions “tilt-shift” the Composer technically only qualifies for the “tilt” part (a rotation of the lens plane relative to the image plane) and actually doesn’t “shift” (i.e. doesn’t allow for movement of the lens parallel to the image plane) but I’ll stick to the “tilt-shift” label as it is often used to specifically refer to the use of tilt for selective focus as illustrated in the photo above.

Flowering Lophophora jourdaniana - fisheye/tilt-shift

Adding the Lensbaby fisheye optic to the Composer allows for an even more distorted and warped view on reality.

Warped peyote flower - fisheye/tilt-shift

Non-cactus flora of Joshua Tree National Park

Unknown blue flower

Unfortunately I’m not that well versed in the non-cactus flora of the Mojave and Colorado deserts so I’m afraid I don’t know the names of most of the plants featured in this post. If you have more details I would appreciate a comment.

Unknown blue flower in habitat

I was especially fascinated by this small plant growing in the lower Colorado portion of the Joshua Tree National Park. I visited too early in the spring to experience a full blooming desert but this guy was flashing its bright blue flower, standing out among all the earth tones amidst a wash crossing the trail from Cottonwood Spring to Lost Palm Oasis. I studied the plant and its surroundings for a while, intrigued by the habitat it had chosen to grow in - it would for certain be washed away by torrents of water during the next flash flood.

Unknown yellow flower

Another interesting plant displayed this beautiful yellow flower that looks like it might belong to the Fabaceae (Leguminosae) family but I’m not certain.

Unknown yellow flower in habitat

The yellow flowered plant had found a much more secure habitat, growing safely among the boulders in the rock-enclosed Hidden Valley (rumored to have been used by cattle rustlers in the past).

Nolina parryii in habitat

One species I’m pretty sure of is Nolina parrayii (Parry's Nolina or Giant Nolina) that has long thin leaves (and is sometimes called beargrass). It seems to be especially abundant in the lower Colorado portion of the park but also grows in some of the higher Mojave parts like e.g. the aforementioned Hidden Valley.

Nolina parryii seeds

Its tall flower stalk is said to be edible after being baked, with a somewhat bitter taste. Alas, no fresh flower stalks were to be found at the end of February and I didn’t want to try the old dry ones out for taste ;-)


In order to be better prepared I plan to buy the following desert flora books before my next visit to Joshua Tree National Park: Sonoran Desert Wildflowersand Mojave Desert Wildflowers;-)

Ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens) in Joshua Tree National Park

Flowering Ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens)

Near the closing of February I spent a weekend in Joshua Tree National Park. It was my third visit to the park and this time I targeted in on teddy-bear cholla (and of course cacti in general), Yucca brevifolia (one could argue they are hard to miss in the park;-), and another of my favorites that is covered in this post: the ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens) with its sprawling canes soaring for the sky.

Ocotillo flower, close-up

Fortunately my visit followed a period of heavy rains so the ocotillos were both draped in leaves and flowering. On the downside a strong gale was blowing making it extremely difficult to get a clear shot of the flowers (but as the pictures show I finally managed to snap a few;-)

Ocotillo in the Colorado Desert

The ocotillo, characteristic of the Colorado Desert, prefers to root in gravelly slopes of alluvial fans. Flash floods flush sand, gravel, and rock out of the canyons and onto the valley floor creating these fans.

Ocotillo displaying new growth

Fouquieria splendens is sometimes confused for a cacti, but is not. The thorny multi-stem shrub is in fact a woody deciduous plant. Unlike other deciduous shrubs, which normally grow leaves in the spring and drop them in the fall, the ocotillo may grow and drop leaves as often as five times during the year. Its leaves aren’t season dependent but rain dependent.

Fouquieria splendens leaves

Following a sufficient rain, the ocotillo puts forth a cluster of leaves above each torn, adorning the otherwise dead-looking canes with a flourish of green. At the same time red blossoms may appear at the tip of the canes. The leaves go about the business of photosynthesis until the next drought; then they turn red or brown and drop.

Sprawling ocotillo canes reaching for the sky

The above picture was taken standing on the ground looking up into the sprawling canes of an ocotillo. It gives an impression of the height of the plant as I stand 190 cm (6 feet 3 inches) tall and these plants tower above me.

You can find more information on Fouquieria splendens in the book Sonoran Desert Wildflowers: A Field Guide to the Common Wildflowers of the Sonoran Desert.

Balboa Park, San Diego - The Desert Garden

As mentioned in the previous post I recently visited southern California. During a day off I and a couple of colleagues decided to visit the San Diego Zoo - I have to confess that I also had a cunning plan to lure my not-so-cacti-interested colleagues into visiting the Desert Garden located in Balboa Park just next to the Zoo.

My plan succeeded and after enjoying the fabulous Zoo we spent some quality time among the cacti and succulents growing on the slopes of the Desert Garden. Unfortunately the visit was improvised and rather badly planned so I missed the Old Cactus Garden, the Botanical Building, and several other interesting gardens in Balboa Park, places that I in hindsight would have liked to visit. Then again, now I have a good excuse for going back to San Diego ;-)

According to their website “the Desert Garden contains more than 1,300 plants, including succulents and drought-resistant plants from around the world, within its 2.5 acres. The peak blooming period is January through March”. I guess my visit in very early January was a tad too early to experience the full-throttle flower fest as only a few of the plants were blooming (several of the cacti were budding, though - again a good reason for revisiting Balboa Park ;-)

Yet another reason for coming back is that several of the pathways in the Desert Garden were closed during my visit due to heavy rains just a few days prior.

Cacti in Crystal Cove State Park

During a recent visit to Orange County I had a weekend to kill. I neither had the energy nor the time to head for the open desert so instead I decided for a stroll at Laguna Beach.


Cylindropuntia prolifera (coastal cholla) overlooking the Pacific Ocean

I never made it to Laguna Beach though. Cruising south on the Pacific Coast Highway I noticed a sign advertising Crystal Cove State Park and decided to check it out.


Opuntia littoralis (coastal prickly-pear)

And I’m glad I did - the park turned out to comprise a secluded and pristine stretch of beach, almost completely deserted in spite of its location smack in the middle of the SoCal urban sprawl. And best of all cacti were abundant ;-)

I have to admit I was a bit surprised to see cactus growing that close to the sea - they even grow on the dramatic slopes of the coastal bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It just goes to show how diverse environments cacti are capable of coping with.

I’m not well versed in opuntioids but according to this Flora of Crystal Cove State Park the Cactaceae growing in the park are Opuntia littoralis (coastal prickly-pear) and Cylindropuntia prolifera (coastal cholla).


The beach at Crystal Cove State Park

Entering the park I was greeted by a friendly ranger who recommended a hike that takes you down the coastal bluffs and onto the beach - I followed her advice and spent a couple of hours walking the beautiful trails and enjoying the peaceful beach (and of course the cacti ;-)

It was quite magical walking the beach where the only sounds were the rumble of the breaking waves and the squeaking of seagulls, knowing that only a few hundred meters inland you would be engulfed in the ubiquitous noise of cars hissing by.


Tide pool at Crystal Cove State Park

I love the rock formations along California’s beaches, savor the fascinating sea cliffs that have been sculpted by winds and the relentless battering by waves through the ages.


Rock “hoof”

Unfortunately I didn’t bring my Nikon SLR for this trip and my phone is a less than ideal camera, but the pictures will have to suffice.

You can find more information on hiking Crystal Cove State Park in the book California's Coastal Parks: A Day Hiker's Guide.