Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Digital Library

The Vizcaino subdivision is on the Pacific side of the Baja California peninsula. Though rainfall is very low, cool, humid sea breezes with frequent fog ameliorate the aridity. Winter rain predominates and averages less than five inches (125 mm). This subdivision contains some of the most bizarre plants and eerily beautiful landscapes in the world. There are fields of huge, sculpted white granite boulders or black lava cliffs that shelter botanical apparitions such as boojums (Fouquieria columnaris), twisted and swollen Baja elephant trees (Pachycormus discolor), sixty-foot (18 m) tall cardones, strangler figs (Ficus petiolaris ssp. palmeri) that grow on rocks, and blue palm trees (Brahea armata). In stark contrast, the coastal Vizcaino Plain is a flat, cool, fog desert of shrubs barely a foot tall, with occasional mass blooms of annual species.