April 20, 2018 Hello ,
No featured
story today, just want to share photos from my trip last weekend to Tuscan, Arizona. This landscape is so foreign to me, so different from the landscape I've been around all my life that it seems like a far off planet.
I absolutely love looking at all the different cacti, and this is the first time I
have been there in time to see them bloom. This is a prickly pear cactus, which is my favorite.
After it blooms it grows edible fruit, which is sometimes made into jam and can be served in a variety of fruit dishes. It apparently has health benefits including antiviral, anti-inflammatory and
anti-blood clotting properties.
This one is a strawberry hedgehog cactus, which grows in clumps of as many as 60 plants.
I was surprised to discover that a high
proportion of cacti are threatened with extinction. The leading danger to cacti in the American Southwest is not loss of habitat nor plodding livestock, but illegal collection and trade.
By the way, you can say cacti or cactuses
for the plural of cactus. Either is correct grammatically. The saguaro may be the most well-known cactus and ubiquitous symbol of the American west, though it is exclusively indigenous to southern Arizona and the Sonoran state of Mexico.
This photo is from the Saguaro National Monument near Tuscan, where they dot the landscape as far as the eye can see. I was awe-struck.
They can grow between 40 and 60 feet high with as many as 25 arms, some living to be 200
years old.
But they grow very slowly, and the rate depends on climate, precipitation and location. In Saguaro National Park, biologists note it takes a saguaro eight years to grow one or two inches. They begin to sprout branches in 50 to 70 years, but in dryer conditions, it could take 100-years to branch out.
The saguaro is not currently listed as threatened or endangered, but Arizona has strict regulations about the harvesting, collection or destruction of this cactus.
Poorly armed Jewish men and women, many
of them practically starving fought 2,000 tank-supported SS troops, who, stunned by the ferocity of the Jewish fighters.
Until next week... Have you read a great book? Tell me about it. Have a burning question? Let me know. If you know someone who might enjoy
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