This is out of sequence as we are now on the on the left coast, comfortably lodged with Tom and Kate in Sunnyvale, California, where we biked along the Baylands Trail today and got more sun than we should have. But I wanted to say a few words about the plant namesakes for the two national parks we visited in the past week.
The Saguaro, reaching as high as 50 feet after more than a century, is the largest cactus found in the US. Its root system, however, is surprisingly shallow—three inches below the surface, designed to catch the limited desert rainfall. Woodpeckers and flickers live in nests they excavate in the fleshy trunk; red-tailed hawks build nests in upper branches. The Saguaro’s fig-like fruit has been used for centuries by people of the desert. Even after the cactus withers and dies, its woody support ribs are used to build shelters and fences. But what I like best about the Saguaro is that it’s what we all come up with when asked to draw a cactus. I still have a green-crayoned Saguaro on a yellowing sheet from kindergarten that looks very much like what we’ve been looking at in southern Arizona.
The Joshua Tree, in southeastern California, isn’t really a tree at all but a yucca. (Yipes: we have yuccas on the Cape!). It grows even more slowly than the Saguaro—less than an inch a year, which means a 20-foot Josh is about 250 years old! Mormon settlers supposedly named it after the Biblical character, pointing them on to Zion. The coolest thing I’ve learned about this strange- looking plant is that the loggerhead shrike, a bird found in the park, uses the tree's sharp pointed leaves to impale mice, lizards, insects and even small birds while it rips them to shreds and eats them. We missed this park activity, however, which is probably a good thing. –
DJN
The Saguaro, reaching as high as 50 feet after more than a century, is the largest cactus found in the US. Its root system, however, is surprisingly shallow—three inches below the surface, designed to catch the limited desert rainfall. Woodpeckers and flickers live in nests they excavate in the fleshy trunk; red-tailed hawks build nests in upper branches. The Saguaro’s fig-like fruit has been used for centuries by people of the desert. Even after the cactus withers and dies, its woody support ribs are used to build shelters and fences. But what I like best about the Saguaro is that it’s what we all come up with when asked to draw a cactus. I still have a green-crayoned Saguaro on a yellowing sheet from kindergarten that looks very much like what we’ve been looking at in southern Arizona.
The Joshua Tree, in southeastern California, isn’t really a tree at all but a yucca. (Yipes: we have yuccas on the Cape!). It grows even more slowly than the Saguaro—less than an inch a year, which means a 20-foot Josh is about 250 years old! Mormon settlers supposedly named it after the Biblical character, pointing them on to Zion. The coolest thing I’ve learned about this strange- looking plant is that the loggerhead shrike, a bird found in the park, uses the tree's sharp pointed leaves to impale mice, lizards, insects and even small birds while it rips them to shreds and eats them. We missed this park activity, however, which is probably a good thing. –DJN
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