Well, last night, actually. When I went out front this morning, I saw that my first saguaro flower had opened overnight. The flower is up at about the eleven foot mark on the cactus, so I will be unable to get an image of it face on. Not to worry, though, there are plenty of buds on the lower arms that will continue opening this spring and summer. Click on the image to enlarge.
After these pretty flowers close up, the fruit of the prickly pear cactus will start to develop and eventually will provide nourishment and seeds for propagation. Click on the image to enlarge.
I posted about this peanut cactus last month and said that we would bring it to the new place in Arizona. As you can see, it likes it here; it has five open flowers with more to come! Click on the image to enlarge.
Now that this giant saguaro is in place, we are going to decorate our landscape with shrubs and flowering cacti that will complete our visualization of the way this dream house should look. Below the giant cactus, we will have some shrubs planted in the strip along the driveway down to the road. In addition, there will be some flowering shrubs to the left of the saguaro. This is, in effect, the ‘before’ picture. Click on the image to enlarge.
This should give you a pretty good idea of the height of our saguaro cactus. I’m 5’8″ and Verna is right at 5′ tall. The saguaro is at least 13′ and growing. Click on the image to enlarge.
Verna was walking the dogs on the road this afternoon while I was standing in the courtyard watching her and the dogs as well as admiring our (new to us but really old) saguaro cactus. Saguaros generally don’t start sprouting “arms” until they are as much as seventy-five years old or more and this one has five arms with arm buds for seven or eight new arms.
We were quite lucky to get this cactus at the price we paid. It augments the southwestern “flavor” we were looking for in our Arizona home. Click on the image (that Verna took from the road) to enlarge.
