Ok. That bit about saguaros was only half-true

The subscribe-info for this blog mentions saguaros (Carnegiea gigantea) and implies that you won’t read about them here. Well, that was the case before the Covid-19 virus showed up here in Pima County and before my subsequent decision to avoid big or even small events.

So instead of going to the Tree Climbing Festival (for professional arborists) in downtown Tucson last weekend I decided to visit the Saguaro National Park East which abuts the eastern edge of the city, about a half an hour’s drive from my place.

The billionaire and the cacti

Before I show a few photos of the park, here is some trivia about the name Carnegie and saguaros.

The botanic name for saguaros honors Scottish-born, mega-billionaire industrialist Andrew Carnegie. After he became one of the richest men ever in the U.S. back in the late 1800s he started giving his money away and is best known for building over 3000 libraries and 7000 church organs all over America and the U.K. He also endowed a scientific lab that apparently had an outpost in Arizona. You can find more about him here.

Newcomer saguaros

Like Carnegie, saguaros are also immigrants to the U.S., but saguaros arrived in the Sonora desert in Southern Arizona from Mexico just a few thousand years ago. They are a semi-tropical cactus and grow only in a specific range (under 4,000 ft. elevation) and under a specific combination of wet/dry circumstances. Under the right conditions they can live for more than 150 years and grow to over 45 feet tall. Now, as the climate is changing, it is uncertain how well they will survive; their population is decreasing.

Anyway…since I was avoiding crowds, I decided to take the 8 mile long loop drive through the Park. Here are a few things I saw:

Saguaros are sneaky cactus, if you ask me. Their favorite place to begin life is under the shade of a mesquite tree. But as the decades pass, see right photo below, the tree dies (or is killed) and the saguaro continues growing. I asked a botanist at the Park about this and he was not sure if the saguaros actually killed the tree they grew up under or or outlive it, or if some other factor was involved.

As you can see saguaros are not even the most common plant in the Park, but another immigrant plant is: the creosote bush, ( Larrea tridentata). And, according to that same Park botanist, prickly pear cactus (Opuntia) are growing ever more common.

This photo was taken from up on the Javelina Rocks vista point where a hiking trail, one of many in the Park, began. After stopping here I drove right back out of the park and stopped at Cold Stone creamery for a strawberry shake. My visit to the Saguaro National Park was over and I’ve decided that it was a once-in-a-lifetime event.

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Stay Safe at Home. Smile a Lot.