Plant Of The Week: Crawling Devil Cactus

Among several endemic (growing in only one region) and rare plants of Baja California, Mexico, the crawling devil cactus has a unique place. It is the only plant species in Mexico that has the practical capacity to move from one location to the other, and to stay alive, and the only non-erect cactus in the country. This cactus has a very limited range of group that put it immediately under threat of extinction when its small habitats are considered for urban, touristic, and recreational developments. Such a threat is now apparent in the Bahía Magdalena area in the state of Baja California Sur, Mexico, where this plant grows. The threat comes from plans for a major tourist destination. This website present photos and popular articles written by a group of concerned scientists in Spanish, English, and Hebrew. Our objective is to publicize the plight of this plant species for conservation to the Mexican authorities and that its remote habitats should be declared protected areas with no significant development except limited-impact ecotourism.

Stenocereus eruca, commonly known as creeping devil, is a member of the family Cactaceae. It is one of the most distinctive cacti, a member of the relatively small genus Stenocereus. It is endemic to the central Pacific coast of Baja California Sur, and is found only on sandy soils, where it forms massive colonies.

As with all cacti, creeping devil is succulent, and is reported to contain mescaline and sterols. Growth patterns can be widely scattered as individual stems; in favorable localities they can form impenetrable patches of branching stems measuring several metres across. The creeping devil is columnar, with a very spiny stem which is creamy green in color, averaging 2 inches diameter and 6 feet long, with only the terminal end raised from the ground. A height of 1 foot is normal since this cactus is recumbent (it grows in a horizontal manner). The large, nocturnal flowers are white, pink, or yellow; usually 1 inch long with a spiny ovary, and flowering sparingly in response to rain. The spiny fruit is 1 inch with black seeds.

Creeping devil lies on the ground and grows at one end while the other end slowly dies, with a succession of new roots developing on the underside of the stem. The growth rate is adapted to the moderate, moist marine environment of the Baja peninsula, and can achieve in excess of 1 foot per year, but when transplanted to a hot, arid environment the cacti can grow as little as 1 foot per decade. Over the course of many years, the entire cactus will slowly travel, with stems branching and taking root toward the growing tips, while older stem portions die and disintegrate. This traveling chain of growth gives rise to the name eruca, which means "caterpillar" as well as the common name creeping devil.

Stenocereus eruca is considered the "most extreme case of clonal propagation in the cactus family" (Gibson and Nobel, 1986). This means that due to isolation and scarcity of pollinating creatures, the plant is able to clone itself. This is done by pieces detaching from the major shoot as their bases die and rot.

Other members of this genus that are found in the Baja Peninsula of California are Stenocereus thurberi (organpipe cactus, pitaya dulce) and Stenocereus gummosus (sour pitaya, pitaya agria, pitayha). While once thought to be threatened with extinction, further evidence showed it not to be so. Transplantation, while not recommended due to environmentally specific factors, can be done successfully with strict adherence to maintaining conditions which mirror the native environment. 

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