Sclerocactus parviflorus                                                      
Scl.parviflorus ssp.parviflorus
(Montrose Co. COLORADO)
Typical single hooked central spine form 'Eagle Claw' on the ridge of Dolores river canyon, beautiful scenery...
Scl.parviflorus ssp.parviflorus
(San juan Co. NEWMEXICO) 
Massive colony on the stony terrain near Sanjuan river.
This place is next to the habitat of Mesae-verdae.
Scl.parviflorus ssp.parviflorus
(Montezuma Co. COLORADO) 
Very flesh plant, sunbeams streaming through the leaves of Juniper pinyon trees.
Scl.parviflorus ssp.parviflorus
(Sandoval Co. NEWMEXICO) 
Hidden in the grass, living near by Toumeya..
Scl.parviflorus ssp.parviflorus
(Coconino Co. ARIZONA) 
Beautiful long dense colored spines form,clinging to canyon cliff.
Scl.parviflorus ssp.intermedius
(Mohave Co. ARIZONA) 
Type locality plant of "intermedius", but the difference from "ssp.parviflorus" is very small.
Scl.parviflorus ssp.terrae-canyonae
(San juan Co. UTAH) 
Neat yellow flower and long spine form of parviflorus,living on the red sand.
Scl.parviflorus ssp.terrae-canyonae
(Wayne Co. UTAH) 
This colony has disappeared by land development recently.

Scl.parviflorus ssp.parviflorus
(San Juan Co. UTAH) 
Plants from steep rocky canyon of "four corner" area. This form has various flower & spine colors ranging yellow to purple.

Scl.parviflorus ssp.parviflorus

(Duchesne Co. UTAH) 
Far northern locality of S.parviforus. This valley is located on almost same latitude as Salt Lake

Scl.parviflorus ssp.parviflorus
(San Juan Co NM)
On the stony terrace, huge spiny clumps of S.parviflorus caught my eye.

Scl.parviflorus ssp.cloveriae "brackii"
(San Juan Co. NM) 
Endemic to small area along the SanJuan river. Scattered populations can be found on rolling caly hills.

Scl.parviflorus ssp.cloveriae "heilii "

(Rio Arriba Co. NM) 
"heilii" is now included in S.cloveriae. Plants in this locality have stiff black and gray spine and are very attractive.

Scl.parviflorus ssp.cloveriae "reevesii "

(San Juan Co. NM) 
Relatively large form of S. cloveriae. They are beautiful cacti with long hooked spine colored copper to gold.
Clover&Jotter1941
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Sclerocactus parviflorus is the most widely distributed among the genus. They live in Colorado, NewMexico, Arizona and Utah . Therefore, morphological variation of this species like spine arrangement or flower color is very wide. So many scientific name of variety are recorded by experts until today and opinion about classification is somewhat in confusion. In fact there are many type-one grows bigger than bottle of wine, the other miniature lives almost buried in the ground, and so on. The flower is 3-6cm both across and length, the scientific name 'parviflorus'-means small flower- does not fit so much in with the fact. The color of flower is almost pink to purple, but there are also yellow, white, and multicolor flower. The variety of spination is also wide. They have many hooked spine but the number of spine is variable. The spine color is varied from black or brown to gold, red, purple. Their habitat is over 1000M. above sealevel in some cases over 2000M and the area that freezing morning of below zero continue in winter. They are ditributed mostly along the large river system and live on many type of terrain, such as stony hill near the river with gramma grass (Bouteloua sp.), or red sand under sparse junipers trees, and in case they live on cracked cray plains that no other plants live. Therefore S.parviflorus adapted well to wide environment. In vast area of their habitat the colony of different type spread widely and overlap, so that sometimes they mix about repruduction. That's process of adaptive radiation. In this page I intoroduce the plants of many habitats and show the interesting various expression.

'05/03…add new localities, scroll down ↓