My husband took this photo of our saguaro with his iphone. It’s amazing to watch the changes the season brings to a saguaro. Here’s a growth chart that I found to guess the age of this saguaro in our backyard. It has its first arm and is taller than 15 to 16 feet, so I bet it’s 100 years old or older.
Here’s another photo my husband took:
The birds are loving the flowers! The flowers look like the inside of a pomegranate. Before the flowers turned red, the blossoms were white and looked like crowns. Here’s a photo when the saguaro began to bloom.
The saguaro with more blossoms. Unbelievable how they turned red!
Here are saguaros I took with my iphone from across the pool, while writing my morning pages. I thought this would give some perspective of how majestic and tall they are.
Did I mention birds? Yes, the birds are always landing on the saguaro and have also built nests inside. You can see the holes in the saguaro in the photo above that have had nests and baby birds. Once a bird abandons a next, another bird may move in.
A White Winged Dove enjoying the view.
A Curve-Billed thrasher on a saguaro before it bloomed.
Two much water can kill saguaros and with our last gardener we lost three. Over watering can cause root rot and collapse. Saguaros have accordion-like ribs and a stem succulent that allows them to store hundreds of gallons of water during rainfall. As more water gets stored, the skin of the saguaro starts to expand to make room for more storage.
To be fair to the gardener we had, two saguaros were over-watered and fell on their own. One was rescued and it survived, one died. Two others were infected with some sort of disease.
We hired a cactus doctor who inspected all our cacti and told us to remove the two diseased ones or it could spread to others. Then we were told before you can remove saguaros you have to get a permit from the county! We had a knock on the door and a county inspector arrived. The cactus doctor had called him. After we got the permit, we were told to hire a crew to remove the saguaro. After the entire ordeal, my husband thought he could have handled it on his own. However, there were two men taking down the saguaro. If my husband decided to do it — I would not volunteer for the chain saw — nor making sure the saguaro fell in the right place by holding a rope around it.
What an ordeal. We didn’t know much about saguaros when we moved here, but we are learning!
What are some special native plants where you live?
How fascinating, and utterly alien to a northern gardener like me. I had no idea they have such a long lifespan.
We didn’t have them in Palm Springs, although we’re technically in the same desert. They are fascinating!
Saguaros are beautiful, intriguing, but none to be had around here. You have your woes with them requiring professional care, we have our woes with diseased boxwoods that require professional care. ‘Tis always something.
I’ve learned saguaros shouldn’t be watered and they need an open space. We found out that two we lost to disease had been treated by the prior owners. They had specialists out trying to save them. I don’t know anything about boxwoods, but I will look them up.
They are beautiful bushes like you’d see in an English garden that are susceptible to blight and a particular kind of moth that eats all the leaves on a bush. Two years ago we had 25 boxwoods, now we have 13 that we’ve been able to save. For a price. 🙄
That’s awful when a plant is susceptible to a blight. We had a blight that killed all the oleander in Palm Springs when we first moved into our home downtown. We lost all the plants that gave our yard privacy and planted 70 ficus trees to replace them.
Similar situation for us with the boxwoods. What a mess with the oleander, but ficus trees are nice too. We adapt.
Yes, the ficus looked great and made a good hedge around our backyard for privacy. Without a hedge our entire yard was in the middle of downtown Palm Springs for anyone to look into our house.
They are amazing cacti. Quite big for a suburban yard. Their juices would destroy a chainsaw I think. I would be staying well away from them.
I love the flowers
You don’t want to be near one when it falls! It was quite a sight to see!
No thank you, not a pleasant prospect
We have beautiful oak trees in our area. However, as you notice with the pics I took, we had to have it taken down as one was dead. We had to make sure and that required a specialist. Then my husband designed the little place now framing where our oak was (Latest pic) on blog. We have two live oaks in the back yard. Our area is known for beautiful oaks. We did have a beautiful plant I had planted and we had to give it away as it was poisonous to dogs. It was a sago palm. The man we gave it to was thrilled as they retailed for a couple of hundred and he had just bought a farm with land.
I like what you’ve done with the area where you took out the oak tree. It looks good! How nice that you gave the sago palm away. It hurt when we lost saguaros because they range from $100 to $120 a foot!
Thanks! Oh, wow. We do have a night cactus-cereus-blooms at night. We have it crawling up the oak tree in the back and we are supposed to take it down as it is weighing down the tree. It is beautiful when it blooms.
I’ve never heard of that type of cactus before. It sounds beautiful!
Those are great pics of the birds enjoying your saguaro! We were worried about the pugs and just wanted the tree to go to someone who would appreciate it.
The birds fight each other to stay at the top of saguaros. You’re smart to take care of your pugs. My daughter had to buy a mask for hers, because everything goes into his mouth.
I remember when you were having issues with some of the saguraro’s and the pics of some rotting from the bottom. I have done that with small potted cacti because I always overwater succulents. I’ve given up on them!
Yes, it was a few years ago when we had to have two removed. This is the first year I’ve seen the white blossoms turn red and into some sort of fruit. I wonder why it doesn’t happen every year?
Well there’s some research for you to undertake while you finish up your ankle recovery 🙂
True. I have a friend writing a saguaro article for our HOA newsletter. I’m curious to read it to see if there more info that I don’t know.
These cacti are so very impressive and beautiful. I hope the removal is smooth for you both.
Thanks. I was writing about some that were removed a few years ago that were diseased. We have a new gardener and our yard and plants are healthy and look so much better.
I remember reading about them a while back. And also that people cover the top of the cacti with paper cups.
I cover the small cacti varieties with cups in the winter time and have posted photos. They can die of frost burn from the top down. The 20 foot tall ones are on their own!
A very good strategy
That is so interesting. 100 years old – isn’t that amazing? I guess with such treasures, it makes sense that they need doctors and permits! I’m blown away by the color change from white to red. Amazing!
I need to find out why the color change happens. There are huge saguaros out in the preserve where we hike that must be 250 years old or more.
Saguaros really are magnificent. We don’t have them close by (we live near the coast, but as we drive east – especially as we get closer to Arizona, they start to appear. I’m glad you are educating yourself about their “care and feeding” so they will grace your yard for years (and years) to come.
They are majestic! Especially when I learned how long they live to get a single arm or over 10 feet tall!
I’m getting this image of you limping after your injury, trying to cut down the Saguaros. Ha, ha. I’m walking fine, but I wouldn’t do much better. Ha, ha. Btw, permits? Wow.
The whole thing with the County Inspector showed up at our front door happened a few years ago. Being new to the area we were in shock. He asked to inspect the saguaros in question and gave us the permits! We have a new gardener and the yard looks fabulous. We have one fallen saguaro that is back to standing, but has cracks.
I love the saguaros when I get down to southern Arizona. We have pinyon and juniper trees. Many of the pinyon pines died from a bark beetle infestation after the drought began in 2002. It was hard on the jays that depend on them for their nuts.
Yes, I remember the bark beetles in Big Bear. They devastated a lot of forest and it became a fire hazard.
That first shot looks like Kim Kardashian with too much lipstick.
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Weeds …
How funny!
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I’ve learned a lot too just by reading your post. They’re beautiful, and your husband took great photos. I love the birds on top of the blooms.
I will take credit for the birds on top of the blooms. I took those with my Nikon. 😊 But my husband did a great job! Thanks for the sweet comment.
That’s fair! 🙂 You’re welcome! Happy 4th too!
Happy Fourth to you!
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