Exciting news in the world of national park cacti!
A crew surveying plants at Saguaro National Park west of Tucson has made a “shocking” discovery: a mature organ-pipe cactus growing among the saguaros….
The find is significant because the big cacti – with arms somewhat resembling organ pipes – are almost completely limited in this country to warm, low-elevation deserts at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument south of Ajo….
Hubbard said a crew from the monitoring network, which is a part of the National Park Service, found the Saguaro Park specimen in February in a “sort of protected micro-site.”
The plant is big, but clearly not in its ideal environment. You can see the really pronounced yearly variations in width and the most recent growth is not looking healthy, probably a very cold couple of winters.
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May 3rd, 2011 at 7:14 pm
Thanks for the link to my blog- even though you called the beetles disgusting – they are working quite hard at pollinating those flowers, you know, and some of the bees are parasitic or kleptoparasitic and really sneaky! I have to write a blog about those guys.
I’m really surprised at the Organ Pipe Cactus – that’s unexpected, even though we definitely get some stuff here that’s missing on the east side (I live in the bajada of the Tucsons)