Saguaros are the plant giants of the Sonoran Desert, the only desert in which they are found.  They can grow to fifty feet tall and live to be two hundred years of age.  They have pleated bodies, with the ridges running vertically, trimmed with needle-like stickers.  In wet seasons, the cactus widens and the pleats stretch out.  In dry spells, the pleats contract as water is lost. They stand proudly in front and back yards of homes in Phoenix and surrounding areas like the 30 foot tall one in the picture above. 

Saguaros grow slowly, especially at the start of their lives. They can handle a transplanting much more readily before ten years of age.  After that, relocating is much more stressful.  It may take five years for it to fully recover and begin to grow normally again.  Flowering occurs at around age fifty and arms sprout and grow anywhere from fifty to one hundred years of age.

These plants are intricately connected to the whole life of the desert.  There are few animals that don’t depend on them for food - everything from desert peoples to bees.  Nectar eating bats time their migrations to the saguaros seasons.  Numerous insects and birds dive for pollen and nectar into the white-petaled, yellow-centered, three-inch-wide blossoms that open in March and April.  Fruit ripens just before the monsoon rains begin, in June and early July, when the desert is hot and dry and food sources scarce.  Native Americans still harvest the fruit.  Mammals such as ground squirrels, coyotes, rabbits and more eat the fruit that falls within reach.  Ants and birds take their share before it reaches the ground.  When the pods left from flowering begin to blush and swell, many animals await the feast.  When the pods burst open to reveal scarlet, pulpy centers laced with tiny black seeds, the free-for-all begins.

Saguaro ribs are still used for fencing.  Flickers and Gila Woodpeckers hammer nesting cavities for themselves, which are often stolen by other bird species for their own housekeeping.  Cactus wrens build their tubular nests of grasses and other plant material in the arms of these giants.  Hawks nest amongst saguaro limbs too.  Saguaros are so important to our desert ecosystem that the O’odham people of southern Arizona consider them to be the equivalent of human beings and closely related to mankind.  That’s not hard to believe at all when eating the mildly sweet fruit or watching the gigantic, green sentinels’ rock gently in a wind.