Desert Diversity, Saguaro Style

Those of us who feasted on a diet of Looney Tunes and Doritos each Saturday morning as children probably grew up thinking that those funny desert plants zipping past the roadrunner and coyote were all pretty much the same: deep green, trident-looking in their shape, with three equidistant arms.

If you’re like me, you also grew up associating that shape with the word cactus (even though there are thousands of species). And you probably had no idea that what you were looking at was called a saguaro. Unless you lived in the desert or visited it, you also probably had no sense of scale since the roadrunner and coyote often seemed to be only slightly smaller than those three-pronged prickly green cacti.

Now that I’ve lived in the Sonoran Desert for 13 years (transplanted from Pennsylvania where nary a cactus grew of its own accord), I’m here to tell you that those cartoon assumptions couldn’t be further from the truth. Saguaros are all different – as different as you and me.

Some aren’t as thick in the middle. Some are very small, while others are very, very tall.

Some saguaros have two main trunks. Most have one. Some have three. Some have dozens of arms, while others have none. (Hey – that was kind of Dr. Seuss-equse, wasn’t it?) And some even resemble the Coyote and Roadrunner’s counterpart, Bugs Bunny.

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And finally … some saguaros even cultivate different species of cacti on their own arms. The assumption is that birds dropped the prickly pear seeds, and there was just enough moisture/dirt on the saguaro’s arms to support growth.

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P.S. My love for the spectacular saguaro abounds – especially as I’ve seen them struggle through the recent drought. More Saguaro posts to come…

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*Original version published at WHAT I SAW. Reposted with permission of the author.

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