From 28 high-order DNS computations, one investigates the formation of instabilities due to the strong competition between an azimuthal flow induced by rotation and an axial flow due to convection in a tall Taylor–Couette apparatus (gamma=80; eta=0.8) submitted to a radial temperature gradient. One explores the richness of the transition diagram that reports seven different flow patterns appearing either as spiral rolls, wavy vortices or a combination of both depending on the Taylor and Rayleigh numbers. The partial spiral regime observed experimentally by Guillerm (2010) is not recovered at very low Rayleigh numbers. The spatio-temporal properties of the different spirals close to the threshold of the primary instability are fairly predicted and a new insight on the flow and thermal structures of the instabilities is gained from this study. Finally, the distributions of the Nusselt number against the Taylor number are established for various Rayleigh numbers.