Cacti in general are not an exotic plant to me, certainly not in the way palm trees still are. I mean, I can hike the hills around my property and see some. But the iconic, cartoony saguaro cactus? Now, that’s something as exotic to me as the palm tree!
On the way into Phoenix yesterday, I saw ‘forests’ of them dotting the hillsides. I couldn’t believe how big they are. It wasn’t until I reached this morning’s destination that I finally had an opportunity to properly observe and photograph this amazing plant. The one in this picture most closely matches my mental image of the cactus, but I saw some that had no spears (‘branches’) at all and others that had dozens, if not hundreds, of them and were absolutely massive, bigger than a two-story house!
Wait till you’re south of Tucson.
There are saguaro with 30 arms.. Amazing! They don’t get their first arm till about 30 yrs old.
A Saguaro has to be 70 to 100 years old before it grows it’s first arm. I have heard that additional arms are then grown at the approximate rate of one per ten years.