Often comically imaged, saguaro cacti are actually magnificent. It’s impossible not to anthromorphize them. Two raised arms and they become prickly pugilists daring you to “put up your dukes.” Sometime those arms seem raised in prayer as if beseeching the skies for rain. Or maybe simply gratitude to be alive? It takes a saguaro between 50 and 70 years to sprout its first arm. A saguaro’s average lifespan iruns between 150 and 200 years. Desert birds build nests within them and their huge white flowers bloom at night in May-June providing nectar for bats, bees, and birds. Walking among them is yet another experience of nature’s infinite variety and interdependence.
This trio caught my heart. What a sweet, if prickly, family!
photo by Debra Darvick, Black Canyon, Arizona