On the Tonto
May 17th, 2009
I was out this weekend to photograph some saguaro blooms and get some nice images of a crested that I had seen from the road. To my surprise and luck I found another right off the road. This is on the Tonto national forest.
The second and larger crestie seen in the gallery was burned pretty extensively in the 2005 Cave Creek Complex Fire, Arizona’s 2nd largest fire where over 240,000 square acres (381 square miles) were burned. Despite the damage, this cactus and many of its brothers and sisters are still doing quite well as evidenced by their healthy blooms! Great to see the Tonto coming back to life!!
Read more about the Cave Creek Complex Fire:
- http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/tonto/fire/cavecreekcomplex.html
- http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003100/a003195/
- http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=5617
I have a small shrub from a local Phoenix nursery that I planted some 20 years ago in my yard. It’s about 4 feet tall now. It’s a very slow grower. I’ve never trimmed it except… A few years ago I didn’t wanted one of the two crested top formations to stunt its growth, so I cut out the major one, the size of two hands. The other one, the size one of my hands, on another branch of the plant is still there but doesn’t look like it has grow much in the last few years. Some day I should take a trimming from the plant to a nursery to learn the name of the plant.
I just wanted to let people know that crested tops are not unique to saguaros.