Collected in Baja : Rare Cacti Preserved at Wild Animal Park

The morning stillness in the Baja California Native Plant Garden was rudely interrupted by the prolonged roars of an African lion.

The sounds of the King of the Jungle among the barrel cactus, boojum trees, creeping devil and cardon plants of the central Baja desert?

Not on Mexico’s Pacific peninsula, to be sure, but along a rugged six-acre hill at San Diego’s Wild Animal Park where 2,000 plants representing 75 different species of Baja California botanical life have taken root during the past five years.

The prickly paradise is the result of efforts by park horticulturist Jim Gibbons to develop a variety of botanical gardens as a conservation goal similar to that being made with the hundreds of animal species at the park.

The rapidly-developing “Baja Hill” borders, at its lower portion, the fenced African lion preserve at the park, and will eventually have as neighbors a palm garden, a bamboo forest and a canyon planted with ferns, orchids and bromeliads. As the hillside areas selected for the various gardens become more substantially planted, they will be opened for public viewing. A small fuchsia greenhouse nearby is already finished, with its purple and red flowers already beckoning park visitors resourceful enough to discover it.

The Baja garden features more than 60 species of cacti alone, most found naturally only in the isolated valleys and rocky mEsas of the Mexican peninsula’s Central Desert. It represents the largest collection of such plants outside Baja.

Gibbons’ idea for the garden developed by accident in 1979 while he was on a fishing trip to the region’s Bahia de Los Angeles area.

“I found the types of plants and the terrain incredible,” Gibbons said the other day while walking through his re-creation. “The mountains, the valleys, the colors of the rocks; the fact that each bend in the road reveals a different plant--and most of the hundreds and hundreds of different species are found only on the peninsula.

“My first thought was how to get a collection of these plants up to the park as a preserve of Baja (plant) life.”

Gibbons explained that amateur cactus collectors for years scavenged plants from the Baja desert, taking whatever they wanted without regard to conservation or the sensibilities of Mexicans who take pride in their unique flora.

“Some of these plants hardly exist any longer in Baja even though you can find them in nurseries (in California) for commercial sale, so much has been taken,” Gibbons said.

Gibbons spent more than a year getting permission from Mexican government authorities after explaining that his purpose was not to take plants across the border for sale but rather to undertake a preservation campaign. He had a difficult time persuading them of the logic of a zoological society being interested in plants.

As a way of establishing the zoo’s credibility, Gibbons became involved in conservation efforts of the now-defunct Conference of the Gulf, a conservation group that included the four Mexican states that border the Gulf of California, plus the states of Arizona and California.

Even after the Mexican government issued its go-ahead, Gibbons had to assure local residents in rural Baja California that his work would not be detrimental to their environment.

Using his roots in the San Diego horticultural community, Gibbons recruited volunteers to help him with the arduous, ongoing task of finding representative plants, cleaning them properly and helping to transplant them into the rocky hillside at the Wild Animal Park.

Any plant brought into the United States from abroad must be thoroughly cleaned so that no dirt from the country of origin remains. Under federal regulations, such importation of dirt, even inadvertently, could lead to unwanted introduction of dangerous diseases or agricultural pests.

“It’s not a hell of a lot of fun sitting up half the night, cleaning every damn root of dirt with wire brushes, then tagging the plants,” said Tom Parks, a retired San Diego government official and Baja camping aficionado who has made several trips with Gibbons.

“And despite wearing big thick gloves, you end up popping pieces of cactus out of your hands for three weeks after.”

Several members of the San Diego Cactus and Succulent Society are also regulars with Gibbons. Frank Thrombley, a retired factory executive, serves as unofficial caretaker of the park garden, overseeing the watering and pruning. Another volunteer also helped establish the small cactus garden that the city maintains in Balboa Park.

On each trip, the group has a checklist of plants it wants to locate. A new expedition next week hopes to obtain specimens of the Choenia Setispina, a low-to-the-ground cactus similar to the hedgehog variety. It grows only on a few mountains in the middle of Baja.

“If a plant is really rare in Baja, we will only take a cutting, not an entire plant,” Gibbons said. “We also look for oddball things, and really would like to have one of everything.”

Gibbons said that unlike amateur or commercial collectors who want only the best-looking specimens, he is looking for “examples of Mother Nature.”

“So we take those plants that may be bent, may be damaged, as well, because we want this to be as natural as possible.” Many plants that he collects for transplantation are obtained without having to dig them up because they have been uprooted by the wind or cast aside by other natural forces or by farming development.

Because of Gibbons’ emphasis on conservation, many of the plants that he selects are not well-known by the public either in Mexico or the United States.

While a few plants may not thrive during the San Diego winter because of the occasional cold, Gibbons said that most do very well in the Southern California climate. The six acres he selected at the Wild Animal Park closely resemble topographically a good portion of Baja’s rocky central desert area, Gibbons said.

The site today is dotted with boojum cactus, greenish-brown plants whose shape resembles an upside-down carrot. The boojum have been planted widely by Gibbons because they occur often in forest-like clumps in Baja California. “And most people probably have never seen something like this,” Gibbons said, noting that the boojum cactus in nature can grow to heights of 100 feet or more.

Thrombley maintains a reference greenhouse at the park where one plant of each species obtained is catalogued. Seeds from these plants have been planted successfully in the garden as well, he said. Already, botanists from the famous Kew Gardens of London--possibly the largest collection of plants in the world--have visited the area to learn about the cactus collection.

Gibbons’ goal is to educate the public to the need to protect plants in their native habitats or in representative garden displays such as those he is creating at the Wild Animal Park.

“My point is that things as much as possible should be left where they are; that they should not end up in private gardens, because if everyone wants one for their own, then nothing will be left in the wild.”

But the exhibit cannot yet be opened on a regular basis to the public because its location sits next to the lion preserve and near the specially-protected California condor holding area. There are plans to devise adequate security and to put in paths and signs so that group tours can be conducted.

In addition, development of the neighboring palm garden--already with 100 trees--and the fern and bromeliad canyon will eliminate some of the rough terrain through which visitors now must walk to reach the Baja area. Gibbons also wants to reproduce some of the early evidence of Native American habitats along the hills.