I think desert and I think cactus. Not so much in the Chihuahuna Desert.  There are many prickly pear cacti, three or four types even, but the predominant plants are yucca.  The drive to Dagger Flats introduced us to yucca big and small, beautiful and bedraggled. Elevation changes of only a few hundred feet created an environment different enough to support entirely different species.  Regions of volcanic rock interspersed in the huge expanses of limestone create another variable.  The result, an amazing diversity of plants in this seemingly forbidding place.