The person selling tickets at the Tucson Botanical Gardens was surprised to see us. It was below freezing and there weren’t any other visitors. I was in Tucson for a writing workshop and some colleagues and I headed over on the morning of our last day in town so – freezing or not – we were there to wander the mostly-outdoor gardens.
Stepping into the gardens, things looked a little unusual. The paths were lined with blobby ghosts which – on closer inspection – were actually cactuses covered in a thin white fleece. Other cactuses were sporting styrofoam cups as hats. These freezing temperatures are unusual in the area and the horticulture team wanted to make sure their collection was protected from frost damage.
One uncovered cactus that caught my attention was this paper spine cactus (Tephrocactus articulatus var papyracanthus) that grows in lower parts of the Andes Mountains in Argentina. It can grow up to five feet tall and produces white flowers in the spring.
Those spines look so different than the stiff spines on so many other cactus – it reminded me of some sort of deep sea creature. I can almost see those papery spines shimmering in the water as an angler fish swims by.
I was impressed by this massive thick-stemmed totem pole cactus (Pachycereus schottii f. monstrosus) which towered above us. They can grow up to fifteen tall. The totem pole cactus can be found in the deserts of southern Arizona, Baja California and mainland Mexico though this thick-stemmed variety is only found in California.
This variety only produces sterile flowers and doesn’t produce any seeds so, according to the University of Arizona, “the only method of propagation is through woody or softwood stem cuttings.”
The gardens were home to a few saguaro cactuses but they were small compared to the thousands we’d seen earlier that weekend at Saguaro National Park.
Looking out at a landscape covered in saguaros is magical. I haven’t spent a lot of time in the desert and compared to my usual views around Pittsburgh, this vista feels completely out of this world. According to the National Park Service’s website:
People often describe Saguaros found in the desert in human terms, with their arms raised in greeting or else hanging in defeat. For centuries before the Spanish first traveled through the Sonoran Desert, native peoples developed this human-centric view of the Saguaro. The various O’odham peoples – the Tohono, Akimel and Hia’Ced – still refer to individual specimen as ancestors and family members. Essentially, the O’odham peoples view the Saguaro as human. It is central to many of their legends and religious ceremonies and they have worked to increase protections on the species.
Looking out at this never-ending landscape of saguaros just before sunset was reminiscent of looking at a crowd of people at a music festival.
Walking around the cactuses, I noticed a number of them with holes. Gila woodpeckers, of which we saw a few, drill holes in the cactus and over time a kind of casing hardens around the cavity, creating the perfect space for a bird nest. I spotted a sparrow getting comfortable in one of them. Elf owls are frequent saguaro residents too though we sadly didn’t see one.
Saguaros are the largest cactus in the United States though they grow incredibly slowly. It can take a saguaro cactus ten years for it to get an inch tall. It takes another few decades for the saguaro to grow its first arm. According to a sign I spotted in the park, the biggest one ever recorded was forty feet tall and weighed 30,000 pounds. It had 45 arms.
Though I live on the same landmass as the Sonoran Desert, it feels like an alien planet to me. The hills and mountains are shaped differently. The ground is a different color. The plants are different. The air smells different.
Looking out my window in Pittsburgh today there’s four inches of snow covering everything. There are bare maple and dogwood trees. A few blue berries dot the otherwise naked viburnum bushes. I do have one native cactus, the Eastern prickly pear, growing in the yard but it’s buried under the snow somewhere.
When I think of places across the world I most often think about the human-made structure associated with them – the Empire State Building and Eiffel Tower and Space Needle and many bridges of Pittsburgh – but it’s really the climate and geology and plant life that make a place what it is. Now I’ve come to realize that it’s those natural contrasts that make traveling so exciting.
What are landscapes that are alien to you? Have you spent any time in the desert? I’d love to hear about it.
And one more thing: While at New York’s JFK Airport last week I spotted this fake tree:
I’m no fan of fake plants. Usually they’re trying to masquerade as a fiddle leaf fig or monstera but I appreciated that this fake tree wasn’t trying to impersonate anyone. It was a sort of modern, abstracted tree, which somehow made sense in the space. If you’re going to have fake greenery, why not get creative with it?
Welcome to Arizona--albeit belatedly! I'm lucky enough to live northeast of Tucson and even more lucky to live on a property with saguaros. I also find it frankly impossible not to perceive them as sentient and relatable much in the same way as a human. At this point I don't even bother trying to change this view of them. ;-)
"..but it’s really the climate and geology and plant life that make a place what it is." I can only agree! I've lived in the Midwest and in California, and each place has a beauty and identity all its own. But the desert--for all its stark strangeness--is the only one that really gives me a sense of home.
Wow, Boaz! Nomi just visited that garden while she was climbing with friends in Cochise. And I am visiting her now, and we have been enjoying the majesty of the saguaro cactus as well. I can't wait to come back to this area of the country, which I don't know at all. So many different ecosystems!