“Nigger Head” Desert Vegetation Postcard

This 1940’s postcard features “Varieties of Desert Vegetation” including Spanish Bayonet, Joshua Tree, Agave, Palo Verde, and “Nigger Head”. Horticulturist P.A. Munz’s California Flora and California Desert Wildflowers (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1970) lists Niggerhead cactus as the accepted common name for Echinocactus polycephalus, a small barrel cactus native to California’s southern deserts.

Information cited from http://www.the-scientist.com.