It was as gorgeous morning when we cruised through the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.  As you know we popped over to the Dudleya section first, but check out the color on this Shaw’s Agave (Agave shawii).  BTW, Rancho Reubidoux has some excellent pics on the A. shawii flower spike.

The garden is divided up in many regions and here’s an overview of their spiky succulent Desert Section.  Lots of old growth plants live amongst these sandstone boulders.

Native to Southern California, this Coastal Prickly-pear (Opuntia littoralis) grows to about 3 feet tall, but can keep expanding far wider in dense clumps.

No ID tag found on this guy, but think it may be the Mescal Agave aka Parry’s Agave (Agave parryi).

This succulent has made our short list of our must have plants.  Another native to CA, Giant Coreopsis (Coreopsis gigantea) gets yellow daisy-like flowers and a thick fleshy trunk.

Here’s something we haven’t thought of before.  This Agave was planted on its side.  Sorta like you just took the plant and chucked it in the garden.  Well, it seems to be thriving.  I wonder how it would look when it gets super big.

As we kept exploring the 5 miles of paths, we left the succulents and now headed over to check out some of those sweet perennials.

– Far Out Flora