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Volunteers started the garden and it is volunteers who keep
it humming along, all eleven hundred of them. I met a number stationed along
the trails as interpreters, happy to talk to visitors about the plants in their
care. One section named the Plants and People of the Sonoran
Desert contains the plants that
were used to house, clothe and sustain the desert dwellers of the past. Another
is reserved as an outdoor classroom where cottonwood trees shade groups of
schoolchildren who gather to study the plants and, with luck, grow up to be
tree huggers, except hugging is not a good idea in this garden.
Getting around is easy on wide, paved trails — essential, as
wandering off piste is neither permitted nor advisable where the majority of
plants are assertive cacti, especially the huge, ubiquitous saguaro. This is
the cactus of countless old westerns, the original cartoon cactus, growing as tall
as fifteen meters with multiple arms reaching for the sky. Sue, one of the
volunteers, was on hand to explain how the arms sprout forth to increase production
of the night blooming flowers that appear in April. These are followed by ruby-coloured,
edible fruit in June.
I also learned that when birds nest in holes pecked into the
side of the Saguaro, the plant then cooperates by forming a smooth callus to
line the hole, making a perfect nesting box. What did surprise me was the sight
of a dead Saguaro. Somehow I thought it would simply turn mushy and rot away,
but not so. Instead, it resembled a bundle of split cedar rails.
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It really isn’t a friendly bush. To conserve moisture, it
inhibits the growth of other plants in the area, while its small, resinous
leaves wouldn’t spare a hint of moisture for the thirstiest coyote. When it
does rain, however, the leaves fill the air with a pungent odour, considered unpleasant
by some. Volunteer Janet showed me how to sample the fragrance by simply
breathing on the leaves then taking a sniff — conclusion: more a deodoriser
than a designer air freshener.
As usual, there were too many plants and too little time,
but I thoroughly enjoyed my visit and highly recommend it for anyone passing
through the Phoenix area, and it almost
never snows in the Desert Botanical
Garden .
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