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The Galápagos are not lush tropical islands. They are quite dry for the most part and a lot of what moisture they do get comes from mist. The guides pointed out that we were there in the misty season. Nobody has ever gone anywhere that they didn't apologize for the weather.
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Scalesia, on Isabela. |
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Gossypium darwinii, a small tree with hibiscus-like flowers on Isabela Island. It is related to the hibiscus; its cottony seed pods show its relation to Gossypium hirsutum, the cotton of commerce. You may find all these species at the NCBI Taxonomy Browser which is a vast .gov site which is a better use of your tax dollars than just about anything. Meet your cousins. |
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Lava cactus. |
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Palo Verde at the Darwin Center. The Palo Verdes on the Galápagos have not quite committed to spines yet. During the rainy season, some of them put out a few broad leaves. |
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Galápagos prickly pear, with a large trunk. Our prickly pears don't get so tall -- I wonder what the advantage is of being a prickly pear tree? Notice that they dispense with spines on the trunk once they achieve a certain height. |
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Acacia flowers. |
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Some kind of locust tree in Puerto Ayora. If you google "locust" for the Galápagos you will come up with a very pretty grasshopper called the Painted Locust, Schistocerca melanocera. We saw one of these as well, but maybe our picture didn't turn out. It's fortunate that so many hundreds of tourists have put up websites for their Galapagos trips. The web is ever a Library of Babel wherein any particular missing page, such as the first 800 mirror sites of the Dysfunctional Family Circus, can be taken down by lawyers or nonpayment of dues and the remaining 29,000 will be almost like it. |
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A hibiscus flower. |
