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Got this in 1997 as a youngster at maybe a fat foot tall.
It has made it on stealth growth over the decades to this size. Some years just new felt and a dozen spines is all it’ll muster. Last year, nothing at all!
So weird.

Any way, I went to check for any signs of new growth this morning but my eyes instantly went to this bud!
It’s a dang bud!
I’m sure it’ll dry off before fruition but still amazing to me. I mean, San Jose isn’t exactly North Scottsdale.

Does anyone have any experience with a +/-35 year old Saguaro attempting a flower?

I’ll update as warranted should progress be noted.

Are you sure it is a flower bud?

I believe they would branch first before flowering.
And I understood they will not branch before the are about 75 years old. But then again, there are myths on all sort of things that are not as true as the myth is stubborn and this includes myths on succulent plants.

You may be right and it is a flower bud. I did look at Google Images, and flower buds start out as yellow raised round areas near the areoles of the plant. I thought for a short time, that the growth could also be something else, e.g. a soft scale insect.

Harald

Good morning DWDogwood,

why not??? !!!


90726

90714

90206


Keep us up to date!
( But do not be disappointed if the little bud dries up. . . )


Best wishes

K.W.

You do get precocious plants that will often flower exceptionally small, mutations I guess, which if they are advantageous tend to breed with, set seed and eventually replace the normal form, since that's how ev0lution works.

However you can sometimes get a freak flowering one year and then the plant does not flower the following years until it reaches the normal height to do so. It will be interesting to see if it continues to flower once it starts in future years.

Yes why not, KW! Thanks for those photos. I recall your many reports of your trip to the desert here in the states and I’m glad you could dig up those images for reference.

Harald I did poke it with the back of a pollination brush and was happy to see that it wasn’t a bug. That would be really creepy.

Dave I’m going with the mutation theory myself. There’s one in every collection if you look close enough.

Aiko I’m a big fan of myths in nature, and what the truth is behind them. Hope someone can report first hand how much of an outlier this would be should it go ahead and set a bloom.

Oh well, watch this space.

Saguaros are normally bowling pin shaped when they flower. This one is decidedly baseball bat shaped. I've never seen a baseball bat flowering, but here we are!

They definitely flower without branching.

Isn't natural variability grand!

Saguaros can definitely flower without branching. Some never branch at all. I have heard growing arms is a strategy to increase reproduction, since each arm is essentially an extra trunk when it comes to flowering

I'd suggest the unusual weather we've had in California as a possible cause for the flowering. A rainy year would seemingly provide above average conditions for Saguaro reproduction. The damp will help seedlings grow, spur the growth of plants which shade young plants, and perhaps aid fruiting by increasing the number of pollinators. But all that's just a guess

I don't think you're far off, Shane. We had an El Nino spring a few years ago where locally we had 17" of rain between January and March. The saguaros that year bloomed like crazy. As shown in the photos above, they normally have a cap of flowers at the end of the stems. That year, they had flowers on more than 2 feet of the top of the stems.

I heard the arm thing was for stability, but I'm not sure I buy that story.

My theory is that they are opportunistic, like many cactus, and put on as much bulk as possible when conditions favor it.

Starting to become scale form. Oozing sugar.
It was 103 yesterday and I soaked it’s raised brick planter with water.
It’s a happy plant. But note the apex-still no new growth.
Today to be 100 again. Maybe that’ll jumpstart it.

looks like it is developing into a bud.. Yellow to scale.

Slooooooowwwwwwly, but it’s going to happen!

Ooh, I hope that bud goes into bloom! If it does, this'll be big news on the forum, and I'm sure there are more than a few people here who are going to be interested in following your story. Keep it going, my friend!

In Saguaro National Park they start flowering at 35 y.o.

When a saguaro reaches 35 years of age it begins to produce flowers

https://www.nps.gov/sagu/learn/nature/h ... s-grow.htm