The Moorten Botanical Garden and Cactarium is a 1 acre (4,000 m²) family-owned botanical garden specializing in cacti and other desert plants, located at 1701 South Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, California, USA.
It is open to the public for a fee.
The Gardens were established in 1939 by Patricia and Chester "Cactus Slim" Moorten, one of the original Keystone Cops.
The Moortens collected many of their own plants from Baja California, Mexico, and as far south as Guatemala.
Today the garden includes 3,000 examples of desert cacti and other desert plants, grouped by geographic regions: Arizona, Baja California, California, Colorado, the Mojave desert, the Sonora desert, South Africa, arid South America, and Texas.
Outdoor collections include agaves, bombax, crested Cereus, cardoon and boojum trees, arborescent "candelabra" Euphorbia, a two-story Pachypodium, thorned Caesalpinia and Bursera, and some dozen aloes of southern Africa and Madagascar.
In the "Cactarium" greenhouse are cacti and succulents, with caudiciform species exhibiting thickened root crowns, many species of Asclepiads, Aztecia, Gymnocalycium, Alstromeria, Euphorbia, and Ferocactus, plus two fine examples of Welwitschia mirabilis from Namibian deserts. |
