Giant Cactus (Cereus giganteus)
Southern California, Southern Arizona, and Mexico
That fellow over yonder is Cereus giganteus, or Carnegiea gigantea; he is “old Sahuaro” (pronounced “sa-wáh-ro”), Saguaro, or Giant cactus. Sahuaro is the “Sage of the Desert” because of the great age he attains, often two hundred fifty years or more. He is the giant tree of the cactus clan. There are Sahuaro out on the Great American Desert that were old when the thirteen colonies became a nation in 1776. Proud and dignified and stately they stand out there in the great alone, silent sentinels of a long gone past still hardy in the towering strength of their great age, with yesterday gone forever and looking to the day that is yet to come.
Near sunset we may fancy them in silent meditation as if determining some mooted question of time or weather. For in case of long continued drought the reservoir systems of these great trees store up enough moisture to last them for three years, and they will blossom and fruit just the same without fail and on time! Over the entire length of these giants, run long ridges or flutings, which serve the plants as miraculous reservoirs for water: as the ridges expand, the plant becomes water-filled; and as the great tree uses up its moisture, these flutings contract into proper position, thereby exhibiting but one of the many marvels in engineering consummated by Nature, the Great Engineer. Along his twenty or twenty-five flutings she has given Sahuaro a formidable array of long sharp spikes which defy the approach of man and beast alike: grayish black spines, clustering on the lower ridges of the plant and never bearing flowers, and clusters of yellowish thorns, on the upper part of stem and branches, that bear the blossoms and fruit.
Thirty to fifty feet tall, these sentinels of the desert tower above the baby Pincushion, the Cholla, the Creosote and Desert Sagebrush, and the other Cerei, which seem but tiny dwarfs in comparison. Columns of their massive trunks grow singly for a distance of ten to fifteen feet, then curve abruptly erect in candelabralike branches, terminating in masses of waxy white blossoms, the whole giving strongly the effect of a lighted candelabra in the dazzling sunlight. Full-grown Sahuaro weigh six tons or more; they are very sturdily constructed, vigorous and hardy, caring not for wind or weather or time. Woodpeckers make their homes in the waxy green trunks of old Sahuaro, and the injuries made by birds are sealed over by a coating of tissue from the plant itself. These coverings often take form of water containers and are so used by the Indians. The spiked armor causes Sahuaro to be feared by man and bird and beast, and the bold woodpecker and the hawk are almost alone in venturing to nest in their trunks.
In flower time the blossoms are produced in abundance on the tips of stem and branches, large satiny blooms four inches or so long and half as wide, growing solitary but in such great masses of waxy white bloom as to give the effect of being clustered; as usual with the Cereus, remaining open all night and closing in the forenoon. The Department of Commerce at Washington is taking steps to develop the fruit of the giganteus as an article of commerce. Shaped like an egg and about the same size, its crimson red pulp is made into wine by native Indians and Mexicans, preserved as jam and fruit in clay ollas, and after drying in the sun served as delicious sweetmeats to the whites trading near by. In June, when the sun is blazing hot, the Papago Indians camp in forests and harvest the fruit of old Sahuaro, while the dead plants furnish material for the building of their huts and adobe dwellings, the “ribs” used for rafters and poles, and even for fuel. The ceilings of many old buildings in Tucson, Arizona, were made of Giant cactus ribs, several layers deep. Many an Indian life has been saved by old Sahuaro in time of severe drought. Is it any wonder that the Papago begins his New Year in June with the fruiting of the Giant cactus?
The beautiful blossom of the Sage of the Desert is the state flower of Arizona. A hundred miles west of Tucson, Arizona, is a great forest of these noble cacti, the Papago Sahuaro Forest of Arizona, while another forest of the great trees is a little to the east of the state capital, Phoenix. The Giant cactus thrives best in the rocky valleys and foothills along the low mountain slopes and cañons, and prefers a southern exposure. He likes a sandy, rocky soil where the roots can go down deep, or run long distances underground. He begins his life under the protection of some other plant or shrub, and in time crowds out even his protectors. Near Victorville in Southern California, in northern Mexico, and through all of southern Arizona, “constellations” of huge massive Sahuaro, viewed by the traveler for the first time in the ghostly light of the moon, are a sight never to be forgotten. Like apparitions they seem in the white rays, strange and noble figures of another world appearing before us in these fantastic desert plants; it is as if a graveyard had suddenly delivered its dead! Silent and mute and still they stand; waiting and watching and never seeming to die. And here we must leave these majestic plants to their heritage of the desert, above whose blazing sands they tower serene and untouched by the life struggle silently going on around them.
Night Blooming Cereus (Cereus Greggii)
Southern California, Mexico, Southern Arizona, and Texas
The fashion show of the desert is about to close, for we see approaching us in southeastern California the Cereus Greggii, the typical night blooming cereus. Have you been in the Hawaiian Islands? Have you attended any of the early Spanish fiestas? Have you heard the stories of the Night Blooming Cereus? If so, you have heard about the most beautiful, the most fragrant of flowers! No flower garden or conservatory is complete without this graceful queen of the desert, whose evanescent beauty surpasses the orchid and the rose; for the delicate shadings and exquisite colorings of the South American orchid are no finer than those of this night blooming cactus. Pen or brush in the hand of the genius scarce can do justice to the loveliness of Nature’s handiwork, the Goddess of the Night. Most popular of all the cacti, she delights to grow wild on the desert mesas, where the sensuous spicy fragrance of her beautiful blossoms perfumes the air for miles around, along the bajadas in western Texas and Southern California, over the mesas of southern Arizona and far down into old Mexico. Never in abundance, this rare flower grows in twos and threes under a creosote, cat’s-claw, or other desert shrub, which affords the flower goddess protection from the hot desert winds that at times sweep over the mesas and down the cañons, and from the blazing heat of the noonday sun. She prefers a deep sandy loam along the swales or draws of the desert, at altitudes of twenty-five hundred feet and more, though sometimes she appears on the mountains as far up as forty-five hundred feet; and related varieties, Cereus pentagonus and Deeringii, even grace the plains at sea level in the swampy lands of Lake Okechobee down in the south of Florida. Another cousin, the Cereus undatus, grows wild all over the tropics, and is a great favorite among natives and whites in Honolulu; around Punahou College there, in Punahou Valley, the hedge of this Night Blooming Cereus is a half-mile long, and on a single night five thousand blossoms have unfolded! This bloom, often twelve inches long, is the best known of all the Night Blooming Cereus flowers.