I have traveled around the world for a year, going to amazing places full of natural beauty like New Zealand, SE Asia, Nepal and Turkey. Out of all these places I have not seen such different plantlife as I have in the past weeks spent in the southwest USA. It sure is your typical desert with little shrubs, cacti, and brown hot mountains separating it all. There are even Wil. E Coyotes and Roadrunners! For some reason though I always imagined roadrunners to be much larger than they actually are.
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| the woody stem of a dead saguaro |
Anyway this is about the plants cause I think that they were interesting. Everything is spiky. I made the mistake of wandering off the trail at Saguaro National park and ended up with tons of scratches all over my legs. Lets start with the saguaro cactus. This one is the typical cacti that most people think about when they think about a cacti. It is surprisingly huge too. It can get to be about 50ft tall and weigh 16,000 pounds. The outside is ribbed so that it can swell on the rare occasion that it gets any rain. They have woody insides and actually seems like a tree, but with all the green matter around the trunk rather than in leaves.
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| A saguaro cactus |
Another really cool one is the Joshua Tree. These also grow really slowly and can get to be quite large. I like these ones cause they look like something out of a Dr. Suess book, but its real! They only branch when they flower which is not all too often. Of course, like all plants around here, they are quite spiky.
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| Joshua tree |
Joshua trees are very similar to the yucca plant. Before a joshua tree branches it is easy to mix them up. Yucca is neat since native Americans were able to use the whole plant for something. The leaves were woven into sandals, the stalk could be boiled and eaten, and some part of the roots can be made into a soap.
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| Yucca | |
I don't know too much about ocotillo, but I like the name and think it looks really interesting.
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| ocotillo |
On a sign at one of the national parks, it said that prickly pear cacti are found in more than half of the 50 states. This was quite surprising since I'd been to a whole bunch of states before and never seen it. But I suppose with close to 26 of them west of the mississippi... Here's another neat looking plant that supposedly can be eaten, but every time I touch one I end up with hair sized spikes all over my hands.
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| Prickly Pears - usually they are green, but here in Big Bend there were many redish ones too. |
There are also just so many other kinds of cacti, all somewhat edible, but also ready to draw blood at the slightest of wrong moves.
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