The northeastern portion of the Sonora desert, the Arizona upland desert, is home to the giant saguaro (sometimes spelled sahuaro and pronounced sah-wah-roh). This cactus has become the symbol of Arizona, and it is the most massive cactus in the United States, though it may be exceeded in size by some of the giant cacti of Baja California, southern Mexico and Brazil.

Creamy white flowers with golden pollen centers are carried at the ends of the branches. These blossoms are the state flower of Arizona. The white-winged dove is an important pollinator of these flowers.

Saguaros grow slowly and need the protection of a "nurse plant" such as a bush or small tree when they are young. It takes about fifteen years for a young saguaro to reach one foot in height, and forty years to reach ten feet in height. It is about then that they begin to bloom.

They continue to grow for 100 years and may live for 200 years. They are generally about thirty feet high when full grown. The saguaro has a perfect mechanism for storing water in its accordion-fold structure. During dry periods the folds pucker up into ridges and when there is plenty of water available the cactus absorbs it until it becomes plumb and round and the ribs almost disappear. A wide-spreading network of shallow roots harvests the desert rains; a mature plant may soak up as much as 200 gallons of water during a storm.

Woodpeckers sometimes drill holes in saguaros for nests; these may later be used by owls and other birds as well. Birds that may live in saguaros include Gila woodpeckers, elf owls, cactus ferruginous pygmy owls, flickers, and cactus wrens. The fruit and seeds of this cactus provide food for wildlife, and both living and dead plants are frequently used as nesting sites and shelters.

If you are in the Tucson area, you can see these amazing plants at either Saguaro National Park East or Saguaro National Park West. Visitors can enjoy scenic hikes and drives. The western park is near the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, another popular spot for enjoying desert wildlife. The photo to the right shows a tiny owl inhabiting a saguaro at Organ Pipe National Park, west of Tucson. Photo courtesy National Park Service.

One of the first Americans to describe this giant cactus was J. Ross Browne, a writer and illustrator who traveled through Arizona with Charles Poston in 1864. He describes it as follows:

"The next day we traveled over a series of gravelly deserts, in which we saw for the first time that peculiar and picturesque cactus so characteristic of the country, called by the Indians the petayah, but more generally known as the suaro, and recognized by botanists as the Cereus grandeus. A difference of opinion exists as to whether the petayah is not a distinct species from the suaro; but I never could find any two persons who could agree, after exhausting all their erudition on the subject, upon any point except this -- that neither of them knew anything about it. I am inclined to believe the petayah is the fruit of the suaro, of which the Indians make a kind of molasses by expressing the juice. They also eat it with great avidity during the season of its maturity; and it is a common thing, in traveling along the road, to see these gigantic sentinels of the desert pierced with arrows. The Indians amuse themselves shooting at the fruit, and when one misses his aim and leaves his arrow sticking in the top of the cactus, it is a source of much laughter to his comrades. The ribs or inward fiber of this singular plant become quite hard and tough. It presents a green, ribbed, and thorny exterior, with branches growing out of it toward the top, resembling in general effect a candelabra. Some of them grow as high as 40 or 50 feet; the average is probably from 20 to 30."

From J. Ross Browne, Adventures in the Apache Country, Chapter VI, Gila City

Recommended reading:

Epple, Anne Orth. A Field Guide to the Plants of Arizona. Helena, MT: Falcon Publishing, Inc., 1995.

Jaeger, Edmund C. The North American Deserts. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957.