I know that this article was from 2012, but I just came across it this morning and thought it would be fascinating to share here.
The Hunt for the Westernmost Saguaro
Its gangly silhouette has become synonymous with the entire American West, but the iconic saguaro is actually native to a fairly small area. Despite the label on your Tex-Mex salsa, there are no saguaros in Texas unless they're in botanic gardens or in pots. A stylized saguaro graces the sign of the Cactus Cafe in Wall, South Dakota, but South Dakota is 800 miles from the nearest wild saguaro. Colorado? Nevada? New Mexico? No tienen saguaros.
In fact, the species' range covers about two thirds of the state of Sonora, Mexico, and the southwest third of the state of Arizona, and that is pretty much it excepting one small population in California's Whipple Mountains, in the easternmost part of the state, and an even smaller population in Imperial County. I've come to the Palo Verde Mountains in Imperial County to look for more.
By "an even smaller population" I mean there's one confirmed wild saguaro in Imperial County. Added to that one plant are a lot of rumors that it's not the only one there. That Imperial saguaro is some miles farther west than those in the Whipples, and it's west of Arizona and Sonora as well, which means that it's the World's Westernmost Known Wild Saguaro. According to Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden's field botanist Duncan Bell, who has seen it with his own two eyes, that westernmost known saguaro is a healthy, mature tree. It's about 30 feet tall with several robust arms. That would make it about 80 years old, perhaps older.
And then there are the rumors. The BLM's page for the Palo Verde Mountains Wilderness says "Saguaro cactus dot the southeastern part of the wilderness, a rare plant species in California." They provide no citation nor photos. The Calflora database shows that revered botanist Philip Munz found a saguaro in the Cuyamaca-Laguna mountains south of here, just above what is now called Imperial Dam, in the spring of 1931. That individual saguaro is long gone.
CalFlora also has four reports from 1931 of the cactus growing in Tulare County, along the ridgeline of the Sierra Nevada north of Walker Pass, at above 6,000 feet. Whoever made those reports may have been
hallucinating from overexertion or dehydration. You're as likely to find saguaros in South Dakota as atop the Sierra, even in the lower elevations around Walker Pass. (That's not a failing in CalFlora: the database contains records from a number of collections of historic observations, some less reliable than others, and no one has the budget to ground-truth every last one.)
A few reported but unconfirmed observations on CalFlora aren't as laughable, though CalFlora describes the "location quality" -- in other words, the likeliness of the report being strictly accurate -- as "Low." One of them seems plausible: along the south edge of the Palo Verde Mountains, just north of Milpitas Wash. It's at the right elevation, and close enough to Arizona that it's easy to imagine a bird landing here a few hours after gorging on saguaro fruit in the Kofa Mountains, and planting a new population.
The Palo Verde Mountains are a small, dark range about twenty miles south of Blythe. Their geology is complex. I'm here as part of a group of a dozen people taking part in a two-day California Native Plant Society Rare Plant Treasure Hunt, with support from the ecological volunteer service group Habitat Work, and we spent yesterday clambering from wash to crumbling small peak, over volcanic tuff, desert pavement, five-million-year-old tufa and siltstone of the Bouse Formation, and sand in washes and deep drifts. Everywhere were agates, jaspers, small geodes and nodules.
The Hunt for the Westernmost Saguaro
The Hunt for the Westernmost Saguaro
Its gangly silhouette has become synonymous with the entire American West, but the iconic saguaro is actually native to a fairly small area. Despite the label on your Tex-Mex salsa, there are no saguaros in Texas unless they're in botanic gardens or in pots. A stylized saguaro graces the sign of the Cactus Cafe in Wall, South Dakota, but South Dakota is 800 miles from the nearest wild saguaro. Colorado? Nevada? New Mexico? No tienen saguaros.
In fact, the species' range covers about two thirds of the state of Sonora, Mexico, and the southwest third of the state of Arizona, and that is pretty much it excepting one small population in California's Whipple Mountains, in the easternmost part of the state, and an even smaller population in Imperial County. I've come to the Palo Verde Mountains in Imperial County to look for more.
By "an even smaller population" I mean there's one confirmed wild saguaro in Imperial County. Added to that one plant are a lot of rumors that it's not the only one there. That Imperial saguaro is some miles farther west than those in the Whipples, and it's west of Arizona and Sonora as well, which means that it's the World's Westernmost Known Wild Saguaro. According to Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden's field botanist Duncan Bell, who has seen it with his own two eyes, that westernmost known saguaro is a healthy, mature tree. It's about 30 feet tall with several robust arms. That would make it about 80 years old, perhaps older.
And then there are the rumors. The BLM's page for the Palo Verde Mountains Wilderness says "Saguaro cactus dot the southeastern part of the wilderness, a rare plant species in California." They provide no citation nor photos. The Calflora database shows that revered botanist Philip Munz found a saguaro in the Cuyamaca-Laguna mountains south of here, just above what is now called Imperial Dam, in the spring of 1931. That individual saguaro is long gone.
CalFlora also has four reports from 1931 of the cactus growing in Tulare County, along the ridgeline of the Sierra Nevada north of Walker Pass, at above 6,000 feet. Whoever made those reports may have been
hallucinating from overexertion or dehydration. You're as likely to find saguaros in South Dakota as atop the Sierra, even in the lower elevations around Walker Pass. (That's not a failing in CalFlora: the database contains records from a number of collections of historic observations, some less reliable than others, and no one has the budget to ground-truth every last one.)
A few reported but unconfirmed observations on CalFlora aren't as laughable, though CalFlora describes the "location quality" -- in other words, the likeliness of the report being strictly accurate -- as "Low." One of them seems plausible: along the south edge of the Palo Verde Mountains, just north of Milpitas Wash. It's at the right elevation, and close enough to Arizona that it's easy to imagine a bird landing here a few hours after gorging on saguaro fruit in the Kofa Mountains, and planting a new population.
The Palo Verde Mountains are a small, dark range about twenty miles south of Blythe. Their geology is complex. I'm here as part of a group of a dozen people taking part in a two-day California Native Plant Society Rare Plant Treasure Hunt, with support from the ecological volunteer service group Habitat Work, and we spent yesterday clambering from wash to crumbling small peak, over volcanic tuff, desert pavement, five-million-year-old tufa and siltstone of the Bouse Formation, and sand in washes and deep drifts. Everywhere were agates, jaspers, small geodes and nodules.
The Hunt for the Westernmost Saguaro