Cactus Varieties
The Tallest Cactus Varieties in the World
You may not know this, but the tallest cactus varieties in the world occur right here in North America. The cactus has become an emblematic symbol of the American West, often displayed in Westerns as part of the cowboy iconography that has become so tied up in notions of the American Dream and American Progress. But how much do you really know about these desert succulents?
The Tallest Cactus in the World
The Cactus is native to the New World with all but one of the cactus varieties calling the Americas home. Scientists believe the one Old World variety of cactus was only brought there by migratory birds and that the cactus developed in the Americas after the division of the continents.
In the New World, of all the many cactus varieties, the Cardon cactus (Pachycereus pringlei) is the largest. It is native to Sonora, in northern Mexico, but also occurs in Baja California. The native tribes may have used this type of cactus for its psychedelic properties in rituals of the region before the coming of the Europeans. Of all the cactus varieties, you might think of the Cardon as the Redwood of the Cactus family. It rises to over fifty feet in height and is as wide as a person is. The need for farmland has lead to many being cut down, but many still exist in groupings south of the Border.
The Tallest Cactus in the United States
In El Norte, as the Mexicans call it, you will find the Saguaro cactus. Native to Sonora and Arizona long before newcomers divided the region with artificial political barriers, this big beautiful flowering cactus has taken especially well to certain regions of Arizona, like the Tucson area. Although it has not found many of the other areas of Arizona quite as hospitable as its Sonoran places of origin, this has not stopped the government of Arizona from displaying the fruits of its labor, the Saguaro flower, as its official state emblem, the Arizona State Wildflower.
Despite its emblematic status, the Saguaro’s flower is itself a rather underappreciated curiosity. This is because the harsh vigilance of the Arizona desert’s daytime heat has driven the Saguaro’s activities into the cool shadows of the night. There, largely overlooked by the newcomers’ eyes, the Saguaro does its work, feeding those denizens of the night, the bats. By morning, when the labor is done the flowers go back into hiding, and it is only later in the summer that the locals pick the Saguaro’s luscious red fruit, largely oblivious to the processes that have brought them about in the mostly undocumented underworld of the night.
What’s in a Name?
The name “Saguaro” comes from the O’odham language, which is the language spoken by the Pima and Papago peoples who lived in the same region as the giant cactus for which they found so much use. The Latin scientific name for the plant completely obscures this history, naming it simply Carnegiea gigantea, the “giant Carnegie” cactus. Evidently, Carnegie must have made a donation that helped in the research of the cactus.
This is not the O’odham language’s only addition to the English language, however. Many believe that like the Saguaro, the state of Arizona may also have gotten its very own name via the O’odham language. Some believe that the name Arizona comes from the O’odham word, ali sonak, which means “tiny spring”—no doubt a reference to the desert climate of the region. There is not complete agreement on this, however, since both the cactus’ name and the state’s name made their way through Spanish before being anglicized. “Arizona” may also come from Basque word, “aritz ona”—meaning “high quality oak”, or, more likely from the Spanish, “zona arida”—which translates literally into “arid zone”. The origin’s of the states moniker has been lost in the migration from Mexican to U.S. statehood.