![]() ![]() The cluster that Nájera stumbled upon in 2013 remains the last-spotted colony of M. ![]() The cactus’s only unique adaptation enhances its solitude: while it can grow in garden-centre cactus soil, in the wild it has only ever been found on tezontle rock. It is not even particularly beautiful-just a mossy cherry-size globe, frizzed with feathery spines and occasionally haloed with yellowish-white flowers. It doesn’t play an outsize role in its ecosystem. Unlike the prickly pear, it has no culinary value unlike the San Pedro cactus, it has no psychoactive properties. It does not have the Arizona rainbow cactus’s vivid flowers or the golden barrel cactus’s incredible size. But one section of the cliff had collapsed, and on it grew around a dozen healthy specimens of the almost vanished cactus, Mammillaria tezontle. Plant growth peeped out of the crevices of the rock most of it was common desert plants- Peperomia, Commelina, varieties of bromeliad. As they got closer, he pulled out his binoculars. Nájera and his friends edged down the cliff to the outcrop. Nájera, an agroecologist and an editor at the cactus-and-succulent magazine Xerophilia, noticed that the outcrop even had something growing on it. This tezontle looked familiar: its colour, shape, and general location reminded Nájera of the home of a cactus thought to have nearly vanished from the wild. For more audio from The Walrus, subscribe to AMI-audio podcasts on iTunes. ![]()
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