Saguaro country - Sonoran Desert, Arizona - includes related article

Sunset, Feb, 1994 by Jim McCausland

It's scenic, rich in plant and animal life, and it offers grand hiking in winter. It's Arizona's

As you crunch your way up the hilly trail in the soft dawn light, silhouettes of giant saguaros rise around you. Strangely human, they seem to hold their arms skyward, wave them, or reach out to neighboring saguaros in a kind of freeze-frame dance. Golden wildflowers fleck the rocky soil below, and between the saguaros, palo verdes spread bony green limbs topped with fine clouds of yellow blooms. Calls of flicker, quail, and cactus wren float across the chilly air, and off to the south a pair of coyotes move out of the valley and over the ridge.

This is saguaro country--that rocky, scrubby land known as the Sonoran Desert that sprawls across southern Arizona and into northern Mexico. More than any other plants, the magnificent saguaros that grow here by the hundreds of thousands define this land. Their fruits nourish insects, birds, and bats, and have provided generations of native peoples with tasty harvests. Their hulking frames shelter a rich diversity of animals and birds.

Unfortunately, over the years these majestic cactus have been poached for urban landscapes and shot at--one vandal was crushed to death when the saguaro arm he blasted dropped on top of him. Development, drought, animals, and 100-year freezes also have taken their toll.

The news, however, isn't all bad. Having invested more dollars on saguaros than on any other nonagricultural plant in the United States, researchers know a lot, including how to successfully move small- to medium-size saguaros out of the way of development. And we're learning how to fit human communities close to the saguaro community of plants and animals.

Though you can get to know saguaro country anytime, winter is the best season to start: cool, sunny days make hiking comfortable, and snakes remain in hibernation until the weather warms up.

Saguaros...center of life in the Sonoran Desert

The saguaro's story is written on the desert itself. You can hike through it, read it like a book, and come away knowing much more about the life cycles that drive all natural systems--even those well beyond this corner of the Southwest. On a hike through saguaro country, for example, you might see a baby saguaro growing beneath the protective cover of a creosote bush, or a mammoth saguaro standing a full 50 feet high with more than 40 arms, countless scars and nest holes (an elf owl might peer out of one), and about 200 years of history behind it. Or you might see the skeletal remains of a long-dead saguaro scattered on the desert floor.

At any stage of life, saguaros are connected in some way with every plant and animal in the desert.

Saguaros in Phoenix

The Desert Botanical Garden is a great place to learn about saguaros and the wild plants around them.

Start by taking one of the garden's Monday morning bird walks (they start at 8); docents point out the woodpeckers, flickers, and wrens that nest in saguaros, as well as quail, roadrunners, and a host of smaller birds that live on and around these huge cactus. Because the birds' breeding season is now beginning, songs give away the locations of birds that are silent most of the year. When the walk ends, pick up a Desert Botanical Garden Trail Guide (50 cents at the main gate), a basic field guide to desert plants, then amble through the garden to take a closer look at some of the plants that share the desert with saguaros.

Tree-size mesquites and palo verdes--labels tell which are which--serve as nurse plants for just-sprouted saguaros, shaving as much as 30 |degrees~ off ground temperatures on hot summer days. Cardon (Pachycereus) and organpipe cactus (Lemaireo-cereus thurberi) both bear a passing resemblance to the saguaro, and both show up in parts of the Sonoran Desert.

Stop at docent stands to look at cross sections of saguaro bodies, their stavelike ribs, and saguaro "boots." Formed by scar tissue growing around nesting cavities excavated by woodpeckers, these boot-shaped skins are so tough they often outlast the cactus itself.

Joe McAuliffe, the garden's director of research, is among those who have concluded that the massive saguaro die-off in Saguaro National Monument is a natural process.

Before you leave, stop at the greenhouse. Saguaros (Carnegiea gigantea) are among the plants for sale. You can buy small seedling-grown plants anytime and larger plants (usually saved from construction at other desert sites) at special sales twice a year.

Desert Botanical Garden, at 1201 N. Galvin Parkway in Papago Park, is open from 8 to 8 daily. Admission costs $5, $4 ages 60 and over, $1 ages 5 through 12. Saguaros and animals

For a close-up look at saguaro country's creatures, visit The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, 14 miles west of Tucson. All the animals mentioned here live in the museum's zoological garden, built in a classic saguaro forest.

As you walk through, you can learn about the relationships among species. Top predators like bobcats, coyotes, and mountain lions keep smaller animals like rabbits and wood rats in check. That's no small service: when rodent populations get out of hand, they turn to saguaro skin for moisture, girdling the giant cactus at ground level and ultimately shortening or ending the cactus's life. Wood rats, shrews, and kangaroo rats often nest beneath saguaro roots, building stick-covered runways or nests on the surface to protect themselves from the Harris and Swainson's hawks that rest on saguaro arms. Those runways don't stop the snakes, however, who can glide straight into nests, eat the occupants, and set up housekeeping for themselves . . . if road-runners waiting under the saguaro's nurse plants don't get them first.