18 Year Repeat Photographs on the Art Smith Trail
This page presents two pairs of 18 year repeat photographs from the Art Smith Trail just above Palm Desert. The first set of photos was taken on 11 December 2006. The second set was taken on 20 January 2025, 18.1 years later. The original pix were taken of scenic barrel cacti, Ferocactus cylindraceus. The follow-up pix were taken to see what had happened to the barrel cacti.
For each set, a crop of both photos is displayed first, so that both photos can be seen on a computer screen together.
Set 1, from about mile 1.4 from the big parking lot.
Crop of both photos
The 2006 photo shows five barrels, plus possibly another barrel at the base of #3 that I have labeled #4. That small barrel might be part of #3, or it might be a separate plant.
The 2025 photo also shows five barrels, but only two of them are the same ones as in 2006. Barrels #1, 3, 5, and 6 are now dead, with the remnants still present on the ground. Barrel #2 is still present, and has grown in height by 31%. That number is not precise since the base of the barrel is not clearly seen in either photo, but it should be close. Barrel #4, if it is the same barrel, has grown significantly. It is also possible that barrel #4 was part of barrel #3, and died when barrel #3 died, with a new barrel taking its place. Three new barrels have appeared in the 2025 photo, #7, 8 and 9.
A robust conclusion from this repeat photograph is that there is high turnover in the population of barrel cacti here in just 18 years.
There are also a number of smaller barrels present in 2025 that can't be easily seen in the 2025 photo shown above.
I intended to measure the height of the barrel cacti seen in 2025, but got distracted by a nearby bighorn sheep smashing into a barrel to eat it.
From other pix that incidentally show my colleagues, barrel #2 is close to five feet tall, which is consistent with the close-up pix I took of it. If barrel #2 is 60 inches tall in 2025, it was 46 inches tall 18 years ago, and grew by 14 inches in 18 years, a rate of 0.78 inches/year = 2.0 cm / year.
If this barrel cactus had grown at that rate for its lifetime so far, it would be 77 years old. Since it probably grew in height at a lower rate when it was young, it could well be almost 100 years old now. A very simplistic model, using the Jordan and Nobel 1982 measured growth rate of 9 mm / year for barrel specimens shorter than ten inches, and 2 cm / year for taller specimens, gives an estimated age of 95 years.
Bigger versions of both photos
Set 2 will be added in the near future.