Meeting

Speaker Bio: Michelle Cloud-Hughes is an independent botanist and restoration ecologist specializing in the deserts of southwestern U.S. Her first career was with the Soil Ecology and Restoration Group at San Diego State University, where she was first a greenhouse, lab, and fieldworker and then the project manager for restoration projects at National Training Center Fort Irwin and other California desert military bases. Since 2010, she has been working independently as Desert Solitaire Botany and Ecological Restoration, doing rare plant surveys, vegetation mapping, and other botanical work throughout the southwestern U.S.

In 2011, Michelle was present at the discovery of Cylindropuntia chuckwallensis (the chucky cholla) and became immediately attached to the chollas and their tribe. By the time the chucky cholla was published in 2014, she’d become a somewhat inadvertent expert in this often despised but extremely important and fascinating group of cacti. In the ten years since chucky’s publication, she’s been fortunate enough to participate in numerous research projects and publications examining the evolutionary relationships within the cholla tribe, with occasional research detours into other cactus genera including Pediocactus and Echinocereus.

The cholla cacti (Cylindropuntia) are often considered a nuisance by humans, yet they are a vitally important component of their native habitats, supporting biodiversity and ecosystem processes both above and below ground. The past decade of our research into this understudied but fundamental element of our desert ecosystems has resulted in new knowledge, new names, and new questions. In this presentation, I’ll discuss the role of cholla in our desert ecosystems, our cholla adventures and research over the past decade, and ongoing explorations into this fearsome yet fascinating group of cacti.

Michelle Cloud-Hughes is an independent botanist and restoration ecologist specializing in the desert flora and ecosystems of North America. After 17 years with the Soil Ecology and Restoration Group at San Diego State University, she started her company, Desert Solitaire Botany and Ecological Restoration in 2010. Since then, she has worked on many rare plant surveys and other botanical and restoration projects throughout the southwestern U.S. and Mexico. She is an authority on the genus Cylindropuntia (chollas) and an author of Cylindropuntia chuckwallensis, a rare California endemic and the most recent addition to California’s cactus flora. Her research focuses mainly on the evolutionary relationships within the cholla tribe, with occasional detours into other cactus genera including Pediocactus and Echinocereus.