The Desert insists on a travertine rock; a multitude of rocks and boulders give rise to a very picturesque setting. It is home to the largest part of the collection of succulents, with hundreds of samples divided by geographic area of origin.
The collection is partly cultivated in pots, that is, the plants are placed outdoors in the summer, burying the pots on the ground, and are recovered in the greenhouse in autumn and winter. Among the collection we find species of African origin (Aloe L., Euphorbia L., Kalanchoe Adans., Crassula L., etc.) and of American origin (Ferocactus Britton & Rose, Mammillaria Haw., Astrophytum Lem., etc.). The other part of the collection is permanently cultivated in the open field, without any shelter from adverse climatic conditions, and can be visited all year round. With these plants it was possible to reconstruct their “natural” environment and experiment on their ability to acclimatize to the local climate.
A first nucleus of desert comes from the Palermo Botanical Garden and it was planted in 1991; the area was enlarged adding new specimens in the years 1995-96 and 2005, under the direction of Prof. Silvano Onofri
The collection houses specimens belonging to the genera Agave L., Aloe L., Dasylirion Zucc., Euphorbia L., Kalanchoe Adans, Yucca L., Crassula L., Ferocactus Britton & Rose, Mammillaria Haw., Astrophytum Lem., Opuntia Mill. and some generally rarely cultivated opuntioid genera as Cylindropuntia (Engelm.) F.M. Knuth, Corynopuntia F.M.Knuth, Cumulopuntia F.Ritter, Tephrocactus Lem., etc. Some species, particularly well acclimatized, spread spontaneously by seed: it is the case of Dasylirion serratifolium (Kaw. Ex Schult. F.) Zucc., which strongly characterizes the entire collection.
The Botanical Garden houses a rich collection of succulent plants (“succulents”) organized into several distinct sections based on the type of management and location; in addition to the rocky ridge, other succulents are housed in the Greenhouse of Patriarchs, in the Greenhouse Astolfi and in the Desert.
