The October challenge from Urban Jungle Bloggers is a Desert Still Life. This worried me a bit, because being picky I initially wanted to make sure that the plants were all at least from the same continent, rather than just randomly selected xerophytes. But I gave up on this as being just a touch too challenging to manage without using it as an excuse to go and buy plants.
So we have a desk-desert: 
Complete with rat corpse, fossil and er bricks.
With Basil the rat (all rats are called Basil) below, there is a probably-Turbinicarpus, an Aloe melanacantha some Faucaria and a cuddly cactus.
Below is probably a Gymnocalycium (please do correct my id’s in the comments, all my cacti are rather old and lost their labels years ago).
And this is Haworthia truncata; one of those succulents designed to spend dry times almost completed underground with just the transparent parts of the leaf protruding, so as to reduce water-loss whilst still allowing photosynthesis. I saw this plant in the Princess of Wales house at Kew years ago and spent ages looking for one. It isn’t difficult to keep alive, but it took a while to move to a home where I could offer it the conditions it wanted to be able to grow.
This is Leuchtenbergia principis, a cactus that looks like a succulent (but note the areoles at the tips); this plant is at least 25 years old. It used to belong to my mother, and she has been dead for 20 years…
A better view of the Faucaria, also a succulent from South Africa, like the Aloe.
The backdrop is a beautiful book Wild Cactus by George Huey and Rose Houk.
SpiderPlant 
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