How many saguaros do you think are in urban Phoenix? Scientists are trying to find out — and hope the data will help the iconic cacti remain a fixture.
In Phoenix, the summer of 2020 was so hot even the cactuses couldn’t stand it — literally.on record in a place already famous for its blistering heat, the Desert Botanical Garden was beset by calls from worried residents.Some had tipped entirely, the thick concertina trunks slamming onto sizzling sidewalks or,. Other saguaros offered a less dramatic — though still concerning — manifestation of their internal stress: dropping one of their iconic curved arms.
Now Hernandez hopes to harness that enthusiasm in a community science project with an ambitious aim: Find every saguaro in metro Phoenix. Dubbed the Saguaro Census, the count is borne of that terrible time when the urban plants were dropping left, right and center. For both young and old cactuses, she says, the Sonoran Desert is “the perfect framework for saguaros to grow and to survive and to live”.
Hernandez believes the sick plants may be in a state of high distress from their surrounding environment. Hernandez and her team have already taken DNA samples from saguaros spanning from north of Phoenix to south Sonora, and plan to sequence them.
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