In my recent post about Hilton-hopping down in the Valley, I mentioned that I took a day trip to Saguaro National Park during my Thanksgiving weekend.
I just wanted to share a quick post (that’s mostly photos) of the few hours I spent wandering around in the desert among the cacti.
According to Robbie, the set-up of Saguaro National Park was the strangest he’s ever experienced. Most National Parks have an actual address and gates with admission barriers, but Saguaro was just a lot of “now entering” and “now leaving” signs.
We went to the visitor’s center first thing (Robbie loves collecting stickers from the National Parks he visits) and it was closed and locked due to the holiday. The whole park is basically just roads through saguaro fields, with occasional parking lots next to trail heads.
Soooooo… we went off to the trails!
It’s time for some saguaro fun facts!
Saguaros can only be found in the Sonoran Desert… AKA, this part of Arizona and parts of Sonora, Mexico. They’re not endangered or threatened, but they are a protected species — so you need a permit here to do anything with one. Like, even if you have a saguaro on your personal property? You need to get a permit to move it. Cutting down a saguaro is a felony.
There are about 1.9 million saguaro cacti in Saguaro National Park. Saguaros are actually so prized that people will steal them (assholes), so the Department of Interior has actually embedded trackers in a lot of the more vulnerable saguaros.
Saguaros grow incredibly slowly. It can take 70 years for a saguaro to reach six feet and start to flower! There actually isn’t too much known about saguaro growth patterns. Not all saguaros develop arms, and nobody knows why some saguaros grow arms, and others don’t.
They also have strange root systems! They have one main root that extends two feet down into the ground, and lots of little roots that grow sideways underground, about four-to-six-inches deep. This is basically so they can more easily collect and store the little rain water that lands in the Sonoran Desert.
They can grow up to 70 feet tall (give or take) and can weigh more than a ton. They have the little accordion folds so they can store water — the folds move in and out — and their weight depends on how much water they currently have stored.
Robbie and I were also really curious about why some saguaro cacti have arms that point down. As it turns out, it has to do with weather and tissue rot. Because saguaro cacti hold a lot of water, freezing temperatures (those do happen on occasion here) can damage the saguaro’s tissue. When that happens, well… gravity. The arms droop down. Saguaros are hardy plants though, so their arms can recover and start growing skyward again.
Not to be morbid, but I think one of the coolest things was seeing the dead saguaros and their skeletons, which are technically called “ribs.”
So, that’s kind of about it. We spent a few hours hiking around taking pictures of the saguaros before we headed back to Scottsdale to continue our Thanksgiving weekend.
I was honestly mesmerized by the saguaro cacti and will definitely be back to admire them again in the future. They’re so cool!
This post was originally published Jan. 23, 2021. Its timestamp has been updated.
