In an average year, the saguaros on Peachey’s east-side plot produce about 6,500 flowers. Gabe León, intern with American Conservation Experience, places a giant "selfie-stick" with a GoPro camera attached next to a saguaro at Saguaro National Park West. “The only place that I’ve heard of that has even close to a normal bloom is the west side of the Tucson Mountains,” he said. Peachey said his “spies” across the region are reporting similar conditions from north of Phoenix down into Mexico. He is only making weekly visits this year, because there’s so little to record. “I’ve never seen it like this.”ĭuring a typical spring, he has to check his plot every other day to keep up with all the flowering activity. “It’s pathetic,” he said after his latest trip out there last week. His scientific plot contains 139 saguaros with 403 individual stems, but so far he has found just four flowers on a single cactus and a handful of buds that were gobbled up by insects before they could develop any further. #Cactus flowers Patch#He has scarcely seen a thing this year on the 2-acre patch of desert he’s been studying near Colossal Cave since 1997. Research ecologist Bill Peachey starts looking for buds on his saguaros in mid April and usually spots his first flower by May 5. Swann said the cactuses that haven’t produced buds by now are unlikely to bloom at all this season. Their waxy white blossoms open at night and only stay that way for about half a day - just long enough, if they’re lucky, to be cross-pollinated by a bee, bat or bird. Saguaros generally flower in early May and bear fruit in early summer. So far this year, the plot has produced less than a quarter of the flowers researchers have seen there in previous years, and the bloom appears to have reached its peak. “One or two years of low blooming I don’t think is cause for alarm,” Dimmitt said.Ī GoPro camera attached to a giant "selfie stick" takes pictures of buds and blooms on a saguaro cactus at Saguaro National Park West. He’s not terribly worried about it in any case. The ones in the Yuma area can go two years without rain and still flower,” he said. Some speculate that a lack of winter rain could be to blame, but Dimmitt said that can’t be the only reason for low production in a given year. “A number of plants in my yard don’t even have buds yet.” “It’s down quite a bit,” said the retired director of natural history at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. Anecdotally, though, he has noticed a lot fewer saguaro flowers on the eastern slope of the Tucson Mountains, especially compared to last year’s epic display. He said he spends more time these days checking the ground for rattlesnakes than studying the tops of the giant cactuses in his neighborhood. Mark Dimmitt is a Tucson horticulturalist who maintains a sprawling collection of unusual plants in his garden and greenhouses on the west side. Rebecca Sasnett, Arizona Daily Star Passing the peak Gabe León, left, with American Conservation Experience, holds a giant “selfie-stick” with a GoPro camera attached while talking with biologist Don Swann at Saguaro National Park West.
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