Arizona has a rich diversity of plant life. Stanley went to a desert botanical garden at the Park of the Canals in Mesa, Arizona to see some of the beautiful plants. Here you see Stanley with a large cactus. See the big spines on the Golden Barrel Cactus?
Here are some pad cactus on the left and some other cactus on the right. Cactus come in lots of shapes and sizes.
These are agave plants. Agave is a very important plant in prehistoric times. It is used as food, fiber for clothing and the spines can be used as needles.
This is a close up of a cholla plant. Cholla needles are very dangerous and have thick barbs that pierce the skin and then dig in. Sometimes it almost seems like cholla spines can jump out at you. Archaeologists who work in Arizona have to be very careful when working around cholla. They grow in thick clusters and it is often difficult to pass through an area with lots of plants.
This is another kind of cholla.
In the desert, some cactus are very big, like the Saguaro on the left.
Some of are very small like those on the right.
These are Nopales, or commonly called Prickly Pears. They procduce a sweet fruit that can be eaten. Some people cut up the cactus pads, remove the spines and eat those too!
There are many flowering plants in the desert. These are called Fishhook plants.
You can see a zoom of them below. The pink ones below this are called fairy dusters.
This is Stanley standing by a very small agave. See how rocky and sandy the soil covering is? Cactus and other desert plants are adapted to a sandy soil that receives very little water.
Here are some palm trees. These are not native desert plants in Arizona, but they are quite common in the southern cities like Phoenix and Tucson. When people moved to Arizona from southern California, they brought the palm tree with them and now they grow all over! The palm tree is well adapted to the Phoenix desert because so much of the city is irrigated. The palm has long roots but they do not go very deep into the ground, that way they can absorb water closer to the surface to survive.
This tree is called the Palo Verde. Palo verde means "green stick" in Spanish. You can see that the leaves are green, but look closely at the picture on the left: the bark of the tree is green too! Palo Verdes are very common plants in southern Arizona, and they aret is even the official state tree of Arizona. They grow along the highways as well. To find out more about the Palo Verde check this site link.
And here is Stanley posing with our garden tour guides. Thank you tour guides.
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