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May 5, 2003
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Arizona
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1998
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Peter Essick
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"Say the word 'cactus,' and many people get a mental picture of a thick, straight up trunk with rounded tip, and sturdy branches curving to the vertical in a candelabra effect. The species responsible for this image is a local monarch of the family, the patriarchal saguaro [pictured] of southern Arizona. In some 200 years of slow growth, it may attain a height of 50 feet [15 meters] and a wealth of holes and scars from the creatures it helps to shelter or feed."
—Text from the National Geographic book Great American Deserts, 1972
(Photographed on assignment for, but not published in, "America's Wilderness," November 1998, National Geographic magazine)
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