Clinocactus meridianusMeridian Barrel Cactus

In the hollows I opened, a thin grey mud lay just beneath the white salt crust, cool to the fingertip when everything above it was dry. The shoots of Floodherald Saltbloom followed this layer and were seldom solitary. A slight freshening of shallow groundwater, together with more dissolved organic matter from distant rain, appears to split the hard dormant seeds in the same depression at once.

I saw no insects visit the open flowers. The anthers collapsed early toward the throat, dropping pollen directly onto the sticky stigma. Nor is the flower built for wind. A single short-lived bloom seems wasteful at first, but if it completes self-pollination before flooding and drops heavy seeds into cracks of the drying salt crust, the arrangement is more reliable than it appears.

When water reaches the surface, the plants become translucent before they fall. Sudden freshening and inundation turn the basal mud anaerobic, and the fleshy leaves pale and break down as if blanched. Within days even the stalks sink into saline mud; only seeds remain to collect. This speed of absence likely explains why pastoral travellers and early survey parties noted a plant that flowered but could scarcely be taken.