Blossoms on a Saguaro

April 12, 2012 by 6 Comments
Three Blooms on a Saguaro

Three Blooms on a Saguaro © 2012 Bo Mackison

The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth. ~ Chinese Proverb

These are the first blooms on a saguaro cactus I have ever seen. What a thrill!

As I drive and walk through the Saguaro forests in the Sonoran Desert I am on the look out for saguaro blooms. I’ve seen a few cactus with their heads covered with a few buds, and a couple that have a mop of buds like the saguaro in the photograph.  But I have only seen two that actually had a flower in bloom — and this one had three!

These three blossoms will start to shrivel and fade as evening approaches. Other blossoms will bloom in the night and those flowers will last for much of tomorrow. A saguaro flower only lives one day – but what beauty it offers in that single day!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona until the end of April. She is so happy that the flowering season for cacti — hedgehogs, prickly pear, cholla, and finally saguaro — is showing peeks of color in the desert.

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Desert Agave in Bloom

April 11, 2012 by 2 Comments
Agave with Yellow Blooms

Agave with Yellow Blooms


This lovely agave, known as the Desert Agave, is also sometimes called the “century plant”. It may have seemed like a century between flowerings to the ones who originally named it, but in practice it flowers after 8 – 20 years. Although all the flowering plants die, the plants also send out offshoots of non-flowering rosettes that remain alive, ready to flower in another year. The leaves of the rosettes are armed with stiff terminal spines, not to be fooled with, though hummingbirds seem quite attracted to the flowers.

The Desert Agave is one of the more drought-tolerant of the more than 130 species of agave found in north America. It typically grows on gravely earth from south-eastern California and south-western Arizona to Baja, California and northern regions of the state of Sonora, Mexico.

The core of the plant was baked in rock-lined pits by desert-dwelling Indians to form a nutritious energy-rich staple food. Baked agave is still available in Mexican markets. I’d love to taste it.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona. She is grateful for the opportunity to see the diversity and beauty of the Sonoran Desert and its amazing plants.

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Beauty Surrounds Us

April 8, 2012 by 6 Comments

It is easy to miss the details when looking at the whole. We admire the forest, but don’t see the trees, or we do notice a tree, but never examine the pattern of its bark or the intricacies of its flower.

I’ve been admiring the great stalks of flowers branching out from the many yuccas and agaves in bloom for many weeks, and just first thought to take a close up look at one of its flowers.

Spanish Bayonet Macro

Sotolillo Blossoms in Macro © 2012 Bo Mackison

And when I finally did get a closer look – wow. Thousands of tiny white flowers on this sotolillo, white tinges with shades of purple, petals closing together, as if harboring a secret.

Spring pops up in the desert in the most unlikely of places, but when I began in earnest to go on a “spring hunt” looking for bits of spring, I realized that the season of new life surrounds me. Beauty of a different sort, perhaps, but beauty nonetheless.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona.

 

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In All Things of Nature

April 7, 2012 by 1 Comment

The Spanish Bayonet agave is a wicked sounding plant, and no doubt if you bump into it or step upon a fallen spike, it gives a wicked stab, too. But just as you can’t accurately judge a person by his or her name, or a new food by its appearance, you cannot know a plant by its name, nor a casual glance.

It usually takes time to get to know a plant, or a person for that matter.

Sotolillo

Sotolillo © 2012 Bo Mackison

When I first saw the Spanish Bayonet agave, it was a mass of red tinged, spiky green stabbing sticks. Those who knew the desert well called that bundle of danger an agave plant, or according to some botanists, a very close relative of the agave. I thought perhaps they were being generous.

Spanish Bayonet in Bloom

Spanish Bayonet in Bloom © 2012 Bo Mackison

In all things of nature, there is something of the marvelous. ~ Aristotle

Then one day when I was out and about in the Sonoran desert, I saw the Spanish bayonet, but it was no longer simply a spiky plant. Its center had opened, the heart of the plant, and bursting forth was a mass of purple florets. This spiky plant, this plant which has red-tinged tips and a vague look of battle, had always had this beauty in its heart.

It was unknown to me, a newcomer to the desert. But what a wonderful gift for me – a surprise bouquet!

Spanish Bayonet

Flower Spike © 2012 Bo Mackison

One looks, looks long, and the world comes in. ~ Joseph Campbell

The sotolillo – the name I have since learned is the Mexican name of the plant, and one that I quite prefer – offered even more delight at my next visit, a week or so later. The bouquet in the middle of the spikes had stretched – like, I imagine, Jack’s beanstalk grew – and it   stretched towards the sky, a full ten feet high. Lovely!

There is one last photograph of the sotolillo blossom that I will save for Sunday’s post. It is a beauty, perfect for Part II.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona. She remains amazed and grateful for the opportunity to see the diversity and beauty of the Sonoran Desert.

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Color in the Desert

April 4, 2012 by 8 Comments
Hedgehog Cactus Blossom

Hedgehog Cactus Blossom © 2012 Bo Mackison

Our difficult and very urgent task is to accept that nature is not primarily a property to be possessed, but a gift to be received with admiration and gratitude. ~ Henri J. M. Nouwen

I have taken many photographs of many cactus blossoms. But this bright offering of the desert, this magenta blossom perched on the very tip of one of the many stems of this cactus, is my first cactus blossom taken in the natural desert.

Last year the desert was dry, very dry, and the flowers I did see were in botanical gardens where sufficient care was provided to keep the plants satisfied and blooming. But in the desert, along the trails wandering miles from the nearest building, the cactus were late bloomers and I had returned to Wisconsin before there was any blossoms of color in the desert.

But this year? This year I feel as if it is my birthday ever time I hike in the desert, and the desert is intent on giving me daily surprises, gifts of nature that I can only accept with my awakened senses, and then document with my camera and notebook.

It is impossible for me to explain how thrilling it is to be walking along a trail, weaving in and out, and up and down along mountain trails, studying the saguaro cacti forests one mountain over, the saguaros on the southern face of a mountain, as common as pine trees in a Northern forest. And I spot the first blooming cactus I’ve ever seen in the desert – a hedgehog cactus. And it sports one perfectly formed magenta blossom from one stem.

And suddenly, as I walk along, everywhere I look there are magenta flowers popping off the tips of the hedgehog stems. The Sonoran Desert is blooming in bright color as I watch. Occasionally I see a few yellow buds on other hedgehogs, and as I survey the mighty saguaro, I notice a few that have flower buds at their highest tip.

Saguaros typically bloom in mid-May through mid-June in the Tucson region of the Sonoran, but it has been an early blooming season, and the cacti are proving no exception. This year I purposely stayed in Arizona through April, hoping to see the cactus bloom, and I am  quite ecstatic that the desert is showing me her colors.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona until the end of April. She is thrilled that the cactus in the Sonoran desert are beginning to blossom.

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