Saguaro spines

A saguaro cactus, Carnegiea gigantea, can be tall (as much as 70 ft.) and massive (as much as 4800 lbs.), but this one was still young and short enough for me to get close to its top and record the rising rows of spine clusters you see here.

Today’s picture comes from Picacho Peak State Park on Interstate 10 between Phoenix and Tucson on September 30, 2014. The name Picacho Peak is alliterative, but it’s also redundant because picacho means ‘mountain peak’ in Spanish. Some people would say that such a large number of cactus spines is redundant, but the saguaro apparently disagrees.

(While the weather continues mostly cold and bleak in Austin, I’ve been showing a few more of the many photographs I took on my two-week trip to the American Southwest last autumn.)

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman