March 19, 2026 • 40 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the saguaro cactus of the Sonoran Desert.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
And it is cactus Time here on the podcast. We're
going to be talking about what is I think arguably
the most iconic species of cactus. Joe and I were
actually having a conversation though off mic, trying to decide
exactly how we are going to agree to pronounce this cactus.
We are talking about the sowarro cactus, but there are
(00:41):
different versions of the pronunciation floating around out there, and
I do want to apologize to my Arizona family for
not one hundred percent remembering how they were pronouncing it.
But I feel like I've heard it a number of
different ways in different places.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
So I was like watching interviews with researchers who work
on this type of cactus, and what I was hearing
most often then was so worrow. But then we look
it up and the dictionary says, well, you can either
do saguaro or sowara, and so there I'm just kind
of lost. So we're going with sowarrow because I don't know,
(01:16):
it seems like we're splitting the difference.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, but our apologies if we are doing it wrong here. Certainly,
if any of you out there have thoughts about how
it should be pronounced, do right in and we can
carry on from there. This is probably gonna be, I think,
a two parter, and this is going to be part one,
so it's entirely possible our pronunciation will shift between part
one and part two depending on feedback. We'll see how
it goes.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Or maybe we should just use the scientific name the
whole time, because I think you've got a whole story
on that, right.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, let's talk a little bit about the scientific classification
for the suarrow. This is something I've been going out
to Arizona for years and seeing these things, and I've
always been impressed by them. But I think I should
certainly have read the scientist name before, but I've just
kind of let it pass through me, I guess, without
really thinking about it. And it wasn't until researching this
(02:06):
episode that I was like, huh, it's called Carnegia, Gigantia
and Carnegia. Yeah, that's that's an interesting name for this
particular Because to be clear, we'll go ahead and get
into a little bit about it. We're talking about a
cactus that grows in the Sonoran Desert, and it's it's
(02:27):
probably the most defining example of the flora there the
Sonoran Desert. To remind everyone, I think we discussed it
briefly in one of our previous desert episodes, the Carshner
Caverns episode. Actually, actually this is a desert that dips
more or less straight down from the southern limits of
the higher elevation Mojave Great Basin and Colorado Plateau Deserts
(02:50):
and dives down around the Gulf of California on both sides. So,
all told, the desert ecosystem here covers parts of the
northwestern Mexican state of Sonora, Baja California, Baja California, sir
and then also parts of the southwestern US states of
Arizona and California.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Yeah. So, actually, the geographic range of the Souarro cactus
is more limited than you might guess based on the
way it's used in say, movies and TV shows, where
if you watch westerns, you know, Western shows set in
the American West, you could be forgiven for thinking that
(03:31):
the suaro is basically everywhere west of the Mississippi. I mean,
it's just like it's in all of the Westerns, whether
they're said in Texas or Wyoming or Nevada or you know, wherever.
It's just like, Okay, we're somewhere. It's it's somewhere dry.
We're somewhere out to the west, and we've got this cactus.
The arms are pointing up, and that's how you know
where we are.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yeah, and where in reality, it's not even all of
the Sonoran Desert. Really only slight extensions of the range
goes in California. Nothing on the Baja Peninsula, I believe,
mostly concentrated in a slice of territory that extends from
somewhat northwest of Phoenix in South just south below Guimus
(04:15):
in Mexico. So again, not even the whole Sonoran Desert,
but a sizable amount. But yeah, if you're watching Westerns,
and if you're watching old cartoons set and not even
old cartoons like in cartoons in general, or playing video
games that have a setting with the desert, you're gonna
you're gonna probably see depictions of the Suaro everywhere, even
(04:37):
in video like in Super Mario games in front of
the pyramids presumably of Egypt, though I guess it's some
sort of Super Mario world. But yeah, it would make
you think, oh, well, these things are just everywhere. But no,
it's even just a slim part of North America where
you'll find it.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I've actually got a note about suarrow in video games
to get to in a few minutes. Oh, I'm excited,
we'll get there.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Oh yeah, again, this is like the poster child of
you know, realistically of Sonoran desert cacti, but then also
just the most icon iconic cactus period. You know, I
was I was in a yoga class earlier today, and
we're always doing a pose with our arms called cactus pose.
This is where your arms go up like this. I
(05:21):
guess it's kind of like a Some might say it's
more like a football goal sort of a scenario, but
generally refer to as cactus pose. And uh and I
didn't even think about it until today. You know, I've
been reading about about the Sorrow all week, and I'm like, oh, yeah,
it's a soorrow post basically, like that is what that is?
How iconic this particular species of cactus is.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Right, because cactus pose, you could just be a column,
so it's great, or it could be like you do
a kind of twister tangle thing because you're a prickly
pear or something.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, or you're like a ural cactus, like get down
and just make a ball. Yeah, it's like be more
specific yogis.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yeah, it's like saying animal pose.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeahs. But this also brings up another thing about the
suaro that's so iconic is that it lends itself very
easily to our anthropomorphizing it. You know, because they're tall,
they have a like, I don't want to overstate it,
like it's not like these things universally look like people,
(06:22):
and they are, you know, and they're often taller than people.
They don't always have the two arms, but they're close enough.
And granted, you know, things don't have to be very
close for them for us to answerpromorphize them. But yeah,
we see them and we think of some sort of
a towering human form, sometimes with limbs reaching towards the sky.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
I remember drawing this cacti all the time when I
was a kid. I think in part because I liked
drawing desert scenes and they were sort of characteristic flora
of the desert. I you know, I wasn't making geographic
distinctions so I'm sure if I was trying to draw
the pyramids, I would draw it, you know, suaro cactus.
(07:05):
But also because of what you're talking about, because they
have that anthropomorphic quality, you could put sunglasses and a
hat on them, and I certainly did, but I would
go a step beyond and say, actually, they're not just anthropomorphic,
they're friendly. They're a certain type of anthropomorphic because of
the posture of the arms. Now, as you say correctly,
(07:28):
it's not just that they always have a central column
in two arms, but sometimes in nature they do. Sometimes
they got weirder arrangements, but you really do see that
two arm human arrangement out there in the world sometimes,
and because of the posture of the arms, they appear
to be either saying hello with one arm raised above
(07:49):
the other, or cheering with both arms raised, or maybe
doing the you know, the field goal like you were
saying the football field goal.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
I guess it's also cornholio arms, right, that's right, Beavis, Yeah,
I need to But yeah, either way, it is a
positive kind of posture.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
It suggests a friendliness. Whether you're saying hello or cheering,
that's a that's positive emotion in the posture. So I
don't know. It's it's not the only thing in nature
that looks like a human standing up, but it's kind
of cheery in the way that it resembles a human.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, and I mean there are a number of things
also playing into this. For the vast majority of cases,
they are not harmful to people. You know they are.
There is a gentle giant sense to them. And they
are pretty much the tallest natural organisms within their ecosystem,
and so they really stand out, you know, they are.
(08:41):
They are the giants of their ecosystem, of the snorin desert.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
I wanted a minute ago, you were talking about their
use as as like sprites or decoration in video games,
sometimes just in the background. But I was remembering this also,
not think you mentioned Super Mario World. I don't particularly
remember that, But I have a more obscure video game memory,
which is of a game called Bunks Adventure for the
Turbographics sixteen. I was playing a little off the beaten path,
(09:08):
and I was a kid. There were some This is
a game where you play as sounds weird to describe.
I think you are a baby caveman who fights little
dinosaurs and you know, infected mammals and stuff by headbutting it.
Your head is your weapons, so you head butt things
and you can, you know, so you run around these
(09:29):
prehistoric landscapes full of dinosaurs. You know, let's put aside
the well actually of you know, dinosaurs and humans living
at the same time. But you're battling dinosaurs by headbutting them.
And one of the levels takes place in the desert,
and there are indeed these cactus enemies and they're clearly
siguaro modeled because they they've got arms like this, or
sometimes they flip the arms one up and one down,
(09:51):
but you know they're they're doing the bent arms like that,
and they've got the central column. And they also have
zany faces with yellow eyes going like whoa, whoa, whoa,
and you know, going oh with their mouth. They're kind
of doing the they're kind of doing the YouTube thumbnail
face or it's like wow, uh and uh. I think
if you jumped on them they would they would poke you.
(10:11):
So that's what But this burned in my memory as
a child. I'm sure when I was drawing cacti, I
was drawing those things.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Now they're not wearing sunglasses, but there does appear to
be a deret actyl that is wearing sunglasses here? Is
that true?
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah, that's right, Okay, I don't remember. I think that's
just another thing to headbutt. Yeah, when when all you've
got is ahead, the world looks like a nail.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
All right, So let's come back to this name. That
is a scientific name for the war the suaro cactus
Carnegia gigantia. All right, So gigantia makes sense, you know, giant.
Clearly this is a big cactus. But where do we
get carnegia? Uh, some of you might be wondering, Hey,
is this cactus by any chance named after Andrew Carnegie?
(10:59):
The sky is bored American steel industrialist of the late
Gilded Age and early Progressive Age.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
That's what I was wondering.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yes, and it is absolutely the case. It is absolutely
named after him.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
And did he invent this cactus?
Speaker 2 (11:12):
No? No, But the story is actually really interesting and
ended up sort of getting like two versions of the
story of the same story here. So initially I was
looking at this was an article by the New York
Botanical Garden. It's titled This is from twenty twenty, titled
the Suaro Cactus emblematic plant of the American West and
(11:35):
the New York Botanical Garden. This was by Barbara M.
Years and this is just a little history, you know,
brief history of the cactus and its Western classification. And
so I'm gonna I'm gonna roll through some of this here.
So the cactus is described in the West, apparently first
(11:57):
by US Mexico Boundary survey bytanist and explorer Charles Perry
between eighteen forty eight and eighteen fifty three, though he
did not bring a specimen back with him, but he
brings back word and writings about them. Okay, Then Cacti
botanist George Engelman expands on Perry's work and names the
(12:17):
new cactus serious gigantius. And I want to reference here
that there's another My main book that I turned to
research for this episode is The Soarro Cactus, a Natural
History from the University of Arizona Press by David Yetman,
Alberto Broquz, Kevin Holteen, and Michael Sanderson. An excellent book
(12:42):
that I highly recommend. And so I'm also going to
have some additional thoughts from them. But they include in
their book one of the images that Englman created of
this specimen of cactus, and it is it is pretty
amazing because the scale of the suaro is bonkers. They're
depicting a cactus significantly larger and taller than any known specimen,
(13:05):
and the authors of the book point out that the
picture is also quote a tad romantic.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
It's funny because from this illustration, I do get the
real sense of it. Like if you've never seen a
suarro before and you'd only seen this picture and then
you came across one, you could probably recognize it. You
may like, oh, that's what I saw on the picture
in this book. At the same time, yeah, it does
seem a little oh, it feels a little beyond real.
(13:30):
It feels a little fantasy, like an illustration from an
alien planet. And it's got I don't know, something about
the angles are a little too regular here, like it
actually has kind of right angles in all the arms
and the arrangement. Just feel something's a little off.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, yeah, I mean besides the size, Yeah, yeah, I
mean he is I think leaning into the majesty of
the suaro here and attempting to capture it and succeeding
in capturing that while also kind of fudging the scale
of everything, and to your point, like the desert seeming
like an alien world, I mean, it does, you know,
And then that is the impression it leaves on. One
(14:10):
I toured while I was in Arizona, toured a Frank
Loyd Wright's house out there, and one of the things
they said was that that right would describe the surrounding
desert landscape as being like the bottom of the ocean,
and then looking out on it, he felt like he
was at the bottom of the sea. And so, you know,
those kinds of observations I think are valid in common.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
That's kind of funny because I was thinking of this
illustration of the Suarro as being like a human made
antenna of some sort. So if it's the bottom of
the ocean, it's kind of the eltannan antenna out there
in the desert, which in reality was not an antenna
but was a sponge absolutely you know, wildlife. So yeah,
that is interesting, though I feel like we want to
(14:52):
be careful at the same time that we don't sell
short how giant these things can get, Like this picture
might be bit exaggerated, but these things can in their maturity,
can become absolutely huge. They grow to like seventy feet
or something.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah, yeah, a few numbers on that. So we're talking
occasional heights of twelve meters or forty feet, and fifteen
meters or fifty foot specimens are seen from time to time,
and then the record this, according to that University of
Arizona book, was a twenty three meter or seventy eight
foot sorrow found near Cave Creek, Arizona, that was sadly
(15:31):
toppled by winds in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Okay, so above seventy feet is not impossible, but is exceptional.
But it would not be unusual to get mature cacti
of the species that are like fifty feet right.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
The ones in this image, though, I'm thinking, are like
one hundred and twenty feet. Okay, yeah, if I'm sort
of like stacking my people correctly, because the image shows
some little humans in the foreground here. Yeah, all right,
So pictures of the cactus are making their way back
to New York, and this is the point where, according
(16:07):
to that New York Botanical Garden article, enters New York
Botanical Garden founder Nathaniel Britton and fellow botanist Joseph N.
Rose and they decide at some point in this that, Okay,
this cactus really needs its own genus, and they decide
to name it after Andrew Carnegie and write to him
in nineteen oh two to ask his permission to do so,
(16:30):
and that article of the New York Botanical Garden. I
do really love the response, I assume via telegram that
comes from Carnegie's secretary informing them that mister Carnegie quote
asked me to say that he is greatly honored by
the proposal and will do his best to live up
to it.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Can I be as grand as a cactus right now?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
At this point, you may have a number of thoughts
about on this. You know, you might well find it
horrid to imagine that this long time din of the
desert that humans had known about for millennia should be
named after a New York City industrialist, robber baron, if
you will. And I'm not saying that that judgment is
completely invalid. But on the other hand, Carnegie became a
(17:16):
devoted philanthropist late in life, and funds from his fortune
helped establish for starters the Desert Botanical Laboratory, founded near Tucson,
and I believe nineteen oh three in addition to various
other philanthropic venturers championing things like world peace, education, scientific research. So,
in short, if you're looking at all the various monopoly
(17:37):
maned tycoons of the day, Andrew Carnegie is arguably not
the worst by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
I haven't done enough reading comment confidently on that, but
it's true. My general impression is, yeah, that he's more
invested in philanthropy than some of the others of his time,
and certainly than some of our time.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah. Yeah, But you still might say, well, does he
deserve to have a cactus named after him? Maybe not.
And the interesting thing is, I don't think even Carnegie
thought that a cactus should be named after him, Because
when I was well, when I finally got to the
part of the University of Arizona book that I referenced
earlier where they talk about the Carnegie situation, the way
they tell it is that the Desert Laboratory in Tucson, Yes,
(18:21):
acquired much of its early funding from Carnegie, and they
invited him out to visit the site, and during his visit,
they showed him some suarros and told him that the
plant had been named for him in like a blatant
attempt to flatter him, and he did not take it
well that he saw this as just naked pandering and
was like, you know, how, why are you renaming this
(18:43):
Like surely this species was already known to humans. It's
too you know, outrageous and obvious a specimen that you know.
He did not like this. He did continue to fund
the Desert the Desert Laboratory, however, and I'm assuming if
we're to sort of piece these two stories is together.
His secretary at least responds with a nice note later on,
(19:04):
but it sounds like in the moment he maybe did
not see this as is a great thing that the
skeptics was being named after him, and then did not
see why it was necessary and again saw it as
just naked pandering.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Well, I can appreciate not wanting to be pandered to
in that way, And in my case, if somebody tried
to name a species after me, I think I would
be embarrassed.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
You heard it here, folks. If you're out there listening
and you're thinking about naming a species after Joe McCormick,
do not do it.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
That's going to happen. You never know I mean, I'm
not gonna be mad, but I'm not asking for that.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
What have you discovered though?
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I don't know I'd find that unlikely, but who knows.
Where were we though? But oh wait, so but doesn't
it retain the Carnegie name? So it is an issue
like he didn't love this, but they was like, well,
we already had the place cards printed out.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Yeah, it's stuck like that is still the Suaro's scientific classification.
You can anywhere you read about it. So I had
read about it in the past, clearly when I'd gone
to various like desert botanical gardens and so forth, but
I hadn't really noticed it and questioned the name until
this research.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, maybe it blends enough in with
some other biological sounding words like carnegiea carnotaurus kind of
or is it like carnos something sounds like meat or flesh.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I don't know, yeah, Or it's one of those things
where at first I was like is it named after Carnegie?
And then like, well, maybe it's not named after the
most obvious Carnegie out there. I'm just jumped to conclusions.
But no, the conclusion would be correct, all right, So
(20:48):
we already talked about just how tall this particular cactus
can get. It is indeed a desert giant, the tallest
and largest cactus in the United States, and the tallest
deser planned in the US as well. If you dip
down into the territory of Mexico proper, there is a
variety of related cactus called the Mexican giant cardone or
(21:13):
the elephant cactus, and that one can grow larger. Though.
This is one of those things where it's like, what
is the tallest cactus now versus what is the tallest
cactus ever? You can kind of go back and forth
on that. But the authors of the University of Arizona
book note that the exceptional specimen from Cave Creek, Arizona,
(21:37):
the one that was like seventy eight feet tall, This
would have dwarfed the oldest known living cactus species today.
Presumably they're referring to an elephant cactus. Yeah, but still,
anyway you slice it, really tall cactus. They're the tallest
plants in there in their ecosystem, and yeah, they really
stand out. They define their part of the Sonoran Desert.
(21:59):
And I remember being really struck by them the first
time that I visited Arizona because when you leave the
airport in Phoenix, they're basically there. Like, they don't just
dot the landscape outside of the city. You will find
them throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Yeah, speaking to their size and interactions with humans, maybe
this is a good place to mention. You know, there
is at least one famous souaro cactus related death which
I was reading about. I got there actually by way
of a song. So there is a song by so
(22:35):
I've read somewhere about the song. I went and listened
to the song. It's by a Texas band called the
Austin Lounge Lizards, and it is a Western style ballad
that I think is somewhat satirical because it is talking
about this character sort of going out and suiting up
for battle against a cactus. And so it's telling the
(22:56):
true to life story of a guy named David Grundman
who was crushed by a falling souarro after he shot
it in. I guess it was the year nineteen eighty one,
I think, because I was looking for a little more
on this and I found a New York Times article
from nineteen eighty two which says, quote last February twenty seven,
(23:17):
year old David M. Grundman took to the desert near
here with a shotgun and two rifles and began blasting
away at a twenty three foot tall Souarro cactus. The cactus,
mortally wounded by the gunfire, suddenly toppled over on mister Grundman,
crushing him to death. From that, it does kind of
sound like the whole thing fell over from the trunk,
(23:39):
But based on other summaries of the story I was reading,
it sounds more like one of the arms fell off
and like it fell onto his car and killed him.
So I'm not sure exactly which version of the story
is correct there, but yet it is verified that it
in some way this guy was killed by shooting at
a cactus until it fell on him.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Well, you know, we do not take delight in human
death here on stuff will blow your mind. But yeah,
there is something about the story that maybe inspires morbid humor.
I don't know. Maybe it's the fact that it kind
of reminds one of Don Quixote going up against the
windmills or something, you know, And you know, it seems
like a on the whole very avoidable death as long
(24:21):
as you don't go out and start shooting at the
basis of cacti that are not asking for it.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
It does raise questions, Yes, what did the cactus do
to provoke this? It doesn't seem like anything could have
could have been been justifiable. So yeah, so it seems
not advisable to go shooting at cactus, especially if you're
standing close to them. But yeah, not really at all.
I mean, why do you need to shoot a cactus?
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah, I think there's part of this situation too, might
be like a basic tendency to misunderstand not how big
they are, but also just how heavy they are.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Oh yeah, because you might assume they're they're kind of
like soft and light or something.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, or like a like an inflatable from a used
car dealership or something. But now these are stout. They
can get quite heavy. They're like eighty percent water. I
believe that's the percent. I will come back to it
here in a bit, but yeah, these are these are
these are hefty, hefty specimens. Now, before we talk more
about the sorrow, I wanted to talk a little bit
(25:21):
about cactuses in general, cactus origins and getting into why
the cactus unlike other succulents are native to the Americus.
So I'm not gonna spend a ton of time on this,
but basically, here's the here's the quick and dirty version.
So cactus origins in general date back to the mid
Tertiary period, so roughly twenty three to forty million years
(25:44):
ago we're talking about with this period, and it concerns
a period when we had like a great drying out
on a kind of harsh earth. This great drying out
allowed the evolution of various life forms that could survive
and or exploit dry, cooler temperatures and low rainfall. So
the authors of that University of Arizona book right that
(26:05):
this was a time during which the North American horses,
large South American birds, giant crocs, and prehistoric whales did
very well. And it's also when the oldest cactus species
seem to have diverged around thirty five million years ago
in South America, and this would have been long after
the split from Africa, thus the American isolation of the cactus.
(26:29):
So after these new this new type of plant life
gains a foothold, cactuses continue to spread and evolve and
fill new niches in response, to changing ecosystems, and eventually
we reach the point where today we have between something
like fourteen hundred and eighteen hundred and fifty cactus species
across one hundred and twenty five genera. You'll find cactus.
(26:52):
The numbers vary depending on who's doing accounting, but you'll
find cactuses as far north as into Canada. But in
general they grow small and fewer the farther north you
go after a certain point. And as we'll come back to,
part of this has to do with a cactus species
ability to survive freezes. But you know, cactuses come in
(27:13):
all forms. They fill various plant in inches, and they
range from very small and shrub like things to huge
treelike plants like the souarro. Again, these are the largest
of the tree like cacti.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Now, you mentioned that you know they have this sensitivity
to climate factors, and that's not only true for cacti
as a whole, but it is true even within a species.
So I don't know, I don't want to over undercut
you if you plan to talk about this later, but
one thing I was reading about was that you find
(27:50):
very different growth patterns for swaro itself depending on just
like what side of a mountain it's on.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, Like, for instance, I'm to understand the aerials space
different differently on on cacti than this suaros, depending on
where they're growing. These are the little the little like
nubs that the spines grow out of. Oh okay, yeah,
so yeah, speaking of spines, obviously cacti differ from plants
(28:17):
and that they have these spines. These like when you
draw a cactus as a child, what are you drawing
on there? You're drawing the little spines, Like that's probably
one of the most.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Love drawing those.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Fun.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
I would I would draw a cactus with like a marker,
the green part with a marker and then get a
little mechanical pencil and do all the spines.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
M hmm.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah, yeah, that was fun.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, and yeah. These are evolutionarily derived from leaves, which
like new shoots, flowers, and fruits on a cactus, they
grow out of. These areoles, which the authors of the
University of Arizona book describe as felty lumps on the cactus.
And yeah, they're distributed in different ways in different species,
and even within a single species, things can laid out
(29:00):
a little bit differently. Except for a few primitive cactus species.
Cactuses generally lack leaves, though some species like the Prickly pair,
produce rudimentary leaves early in development. Leaves, though, are in
general too costly and too much of a water loss
for a cactus. There are also a few isolated cactus
(29:21):
species that lack spines. Now with the soarro, the spines
are white, up to five centimeters in length and space
generally around three centimeters apart. The spines, as it turns out,
produce rings as the plant grows and as it ages,
which botanists can then date. And why do cactuses in
(29:41):
general have spines? Well, well, I think we know the
most obvious reason, and that is to punish those that
would attempt to touch them, hug them, eat of them,
and so forth, to provide protection right mainly against herbivores.
But in addition to this, cactus spines boast various other
purposes that are pretty fascinating. But also it may not
seem as as obvious, you know, and of course all
(30:04):
these different things can work together at the same time.
But they can provide shade against sunburn for the for
these plants in their desert environments, they can trap heat
and help with freeze protection in colder climates. In some species,
spines may also help in moisture harvesting. Like you read
about these different cactuses that basically like drink the fog
(30:27):
and so forth. Cactus fruits also tend to be spiny
as well, protecting the fruits until they've reached the point
where they can ripen. At least, so there are a
number of different cactus fruits that as they ripen, the
spines kind of become less operational, so that the fruit
can then be eaten, the seeds can be spread, and
(30:49):
so forth. And though of course in this you get
into corresponding adaptations from all the organisms involved. You know,
some animals have spine management adaptations or techniques. Let's see,
on top of this, have cactus flowers in general, they
tend to be very colorful and stand out to attract pollinators.
I think we'll come back to some of that regarding
(31:09):
the souarro. And then also we should know that cacti
compensate for their lack of leaves by carrying out photosynthesis
through the skin and outer stems.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
So this is why the stem itself of the cactus
is often green then that's because that's where the photosynthesis
is happening, is where the chlorophyll.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Needs to be right right, and also where the water
ends up being stored. So the authors of the University
of Arizona book point out that during the driest parts
of the year, the souaro's water it's excellent water conservation
is very obvious because they'll remain very green while upland
trees and shrubs basically become just brown and dried up
(31:50):
in appearance, even though they're still alive. They just they
basically look dead, but the cactus is still green now.
Souarros are columnar cacti, which means that their stem or
(32:12):
trunk and sometimes their limbs resemble columns. You know that
they're pretty, uh, pretty vertical in their structure for the
most part, not counting you know, in the arms and
so forth. But like a column, it is a strong,
stable structure. Uh. The sorrow in particular boasts the system
of ribs. These are rod like woody structures inside the
(32:35):
cactus that provides strength and durability and as a if
these cactus specimens are hurt or certainly after they die,
this this rib like structure remains and it begins to
create these very vivid, like spectacular scenes for the onlooker.
You will see examples of this, and it can take
(32:58):
on this, you know, almost kind of ghoulish appearance, because again,
already we look at these cac dyeing, we think about humans,
and we compare them to humans, and now we see
something that looks like bones inside of them.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Looks almost like a cross between bones and veins. Yeah yeah,
but it does have very much the appearance unlike other plants.
I can think of as the appearance of skin pulled
back from a human being and you're seeing the structures underneath.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah yeah. Also reminds me very much of the monster
from I'm Married an alien from outer Space.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, a bit of that. But Robi,
particularly what I was just saying applies to one picture
I put in the outline for you to look at
of one where it's the outer covering that originally had
the spines and the green flesh is not completely gone,
but it is sort of peeling away, and so there's
a big window to look in at the underlying rib structure,
(33:54):
and it does look somewhat grotesque, and yeah, it looks
like it looks like one of those eighteenth cent illustrations
of like a you know, a dissection of a human
body and showing the layers underneath with the nerves and
the veins and everything.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Yeah. Absolutely, Now, columnar Cacti exists throughout the Americas, but
the the suaros survives far further north than any of
them due to its ability to survive mild freezes. And
apparently a lot of this has to do with just
the mass of the of of this particular plant, and
they can because they can survive a few hours of
(34:29):
below freezing temps like this, and on top of, on
top of just like the pure mass aspect of it,
it seems like there are environmental aspects of their range
in the sonor and that allows them to sort of
cheap by in colder months. So this has to do
with things like mountain shielding from certain wind patterns and
also passive heat storage and surrounding rocks.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yeah, so I'm to understand it's kind of like the
gambit is, we may get freezing temperatures, but they will
not law quite long enough to kill the cactus and
specifically or.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
To overcome our defenses against them.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Yeah, and we mentioned like differences in the sorrow depending
on where it's growing. I've read that most northern Solaro
specimens have spines to protect the ends of their frost
sensitive branches, so they'll be like extra spine growths there
that are just adding. It's like a little sweater that
they've made out of themselves for themselves, out of spines.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
I was thinking, it's like putting covers on your outdoor
water faucets during the winter.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, except made out of spines. Now, I
want to come back to that book, the Soorrow Cactus.
I want to read a quick quote from it. They
write that quote, since soarros are about eighty percent water,
we can accurately view them as standing drums of water
that are effectively sealed from the outside. They point out
(35:57):
that the water inside the cactus is heavy. It's laden
or spiked with heavy isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen, and
this actually ends up marking the tissues of organisms that
consume bits of the cactus, such as you know, fruits
and nectar, in a way that has allowed scientists to
discover how much moisture various desert species gain from the
(36:20):
sooro in particular.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Oh okay, so by you take an animal and then
you look at the relative amount of deuterium or whatever
in it's in the water in its body, you can
tell if it's been getting into this cactus as opposed
to just rain water or something else.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Right, And I have I have not yet taken a
look at any of the specific studies that have done this,
but but it is. It is reference in the book here,
and I thought that was pretty fascinating. Like, you can
tell do they drink of the sooro? Do they depend
on it? There's like this, there's like this this water
tag in their body that lets you know that they do. Yeah, now,
speaking of that water, I think we may come back
(36:58):
to this in the next episode. But we need to
stress that whatever you have seen in a cartoon or
in an old Western is not a true indicator of
the potability of the water inside a saro cactus. I
have a vague recollection of maybe a Bugs Bunny cartoon
where someone just comes up to one of these cacti
(37:20):
and just slices it and then drinks out of it.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Yeah, that's my memory. When I was a kid, I
knew I didn't know much about the desert. But I
knew a few animal facts, and I knew that if
you're lost in the desert, you can drink water out
of a cactus.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Yeah, That's that's what we were taught via our media,
and this is absolutely not the case. The water inside
they're filled with water, but also high concentrations of acids
and alkaloids that falls short of like outright poison, but
would prove disastrous for human consumption, even in or perhaps
especially in a survival scenario.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
What kind of disastrous like complex It just like gives
you diarrhea, Yeah, like that.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Sort of thing, Like do you on top of being
trapped in the desert and dealing with dehydration, do you
also need like chronic diarrhea on top of everything else?
You definitely do not. So, yeah, the water inside the
cactus is not good to go or anything like that. Now,
you know, We'll come back to the ways that humans
(38:19):
have used this particular species of cactus, because not to
say that it's off limits to humans. Humans have made
use of the swallow cactus for thousands of years, and
there are various valid ways for them to take advantage
of its moisture.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
But it's not just like cut and cut and chug.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Yeah, no, no cutting chug, No sticking a spiggott in
it and then drinking from it like a water fountain
or what have you. It's a lot more complicated than that.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Well, folks, we just looked at the time and we
realized we really don't have time today to get into
some of the other stuff we were going to talk about,
So we're probably going to save some of those sections
for next time and come back and have even more
to say about them. So join us again for part two,
And this will be a great place to end part
one because it will direct extra special emphasis to the
(39:07):
advice to not just cut and chug.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yes, yes, by all means, go out into the wild
and look upon these giants of the desert, but just
don't mess with them, don't shoot them, don't try to
drink them. Let them do their thing and you do yours.
And in the next episode we'll get into a little
bit more about what their thing is, and we'll talk
about the way that humans have utilized the suaro cactus,
(39:33):
you know, throughout their cohabitation with these giants.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
Yeah, if you feel tempted to interact with them, you
can wave back to them. You know, you can mimic
their posture, you can cheer for them, you can tell
them it's good.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah, yeah, I think Arizona State regulations would be okay
with that, not so much the blasting or the harvesting. Right,
all right, we're going to close it out then, but
we'll just remind everybody out there that's Stuff to Blow
Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, episodes
on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do short form episodes,
and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
(40:06):
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
And it is cactus Time here on the podcast. We're
going to be talking about what is I think arguably
the most iconic species of cactus. Joe and I were
actually having a conversation though off mic, trying to decide
exactly how we are going to agree to pronounce this cactus.
We are talking about the sowarro cactus, but there are
(00:41):
different versions of the pronunciation floating around out there, and
I do want to apologize to my Arizona family for
not one hundred percent remembering how they were pronouncing it.
But I feel like I've heard it a number of
different ways in different places.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
So I was like watching interviews with researchers who work
on this type of cactus, and what I was hearing
most often then was so worrow. But then we look
it up and the dictionary says, well, you can either
do saguaro or sowara, and so there I'm just kind
of lost. So we're going with sowarrow because I don't know,
(01:16):
it seems like we're splitting the difference.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, but our apologies if we are doing it wrong here. Certainly,
if any of you out there have thoughts about how
it should be pronounced, do right in and we can
carry on from there. This is probably gonna be, I think,
a two parter, and this is going to be part one,
so it's entirely possible our pronunciation will shift between part
one and part two depending on feedback. We'll see how
it goes.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Or maybe we should just use the scientific name the
whole time, because I think you've got a whole story
on that, right.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, let's talk a little bit about the scientific classification
for the suarrow. This is something I've been going out
to Arizona for years and seeing these things, and I've
always been impressed by them. But I think I should
certainly have read the scientist name before, but I've just
kind of let it pass through me, I guess, without
really thinking about it. And it wasn't until researching this
(02:06):
episode that I was like, huh, it's called Carnegia, Gigantia
and Carnegia. Yeah, that's that's an interesting name for this
particular Because to be clear, we'll go ahead and get
into a little bit about it. We're talking about a
cactus that grows in the Sonoran Desert, and it's it's
(02:27):
probably the most defining example of the flora there the
Sonoran Desert. To remind everyone, I think we discussed it
briefly in one of our previous desert episodes, the Carshner
Caverns episode. Actually, actually this is a desert that dips
more or less straight down from the southern limits of
the higher elevation Mojave Great Basin and Colorado Plateau Deserts
(02:50):
and dives down around the Gulf of California on both sides. So,
all told, the desert ecosystem here covers parts of the
northwestern Mexican state of Sonora, Baja California, Baja California, sir
and then also parts of the southwestern US states of
Arizona and California.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Yeah. So, actually, the geographic range of the Souarro cactus
is more limited than you might guess based on the
way it's used in say, movies and TV shows, where
if you watch westerns, you know, Western shows set in
the American West, you could be forgiven for thinking that
(03:31):
the suaro is basically everywhere west of the Mississippi. I mean,
it's just like it's in all of the Westerns, whether
they're said in Texas or Wyoming or Nevada or you know, wherever.
It's just like, Okay, we're somewhere. It's it's somewhere dry.
We're somewhere out to the west, and we've got this cactus.
The arms are pointing up, and that's how you know
where we are.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yeah, and where in reality, it's not even all of
the Sonoran Desert. Really only slight extensions of the range
goes in California. Nothing on the Baja Peninsula, I believe,
mostly concentrated in a slice of territory that extends from
somewhat northwest of Phoenix in South just south below Guimus
(04:15):
in Mexico. So again, not even the whole Sonoran Desert,
but a sizable amount. But yeah, if you're watching Westerns,
and if you're watching old cartoons set and not even
old cartoons like in cartoons in general, or playing video
games that have a setting with the desert, you're gonna
you're gonna probably see depictions of the Suaro everywhere, even
(04:37):
in video like in Super Mario games in front of
the pyramids presumably of Egypt, though I guess it's some
sort of Super Mario world. But yeah, it would make
you think, oh, well, these things are just everywhere. But no,
it's even just a slim part of North America where
you'll find it.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I've actually got a note about suarrow in video games
to get to in a few minutes. Oh, I'm excited,
we'll get there.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Oh yeah, again, this is like the poster child of
you know, realistically of Sonoran desert cacti, but then also
just the most icon iconic cactus period. You know, I
was I was in a yoga class earlier today, and
we're always doing a pose with our arms called cactus pose.
This is where your arms go up like this. I
(05:21):
guess it's kind of like a Some might say it's
more like a football goal sort of a scenario, but
generally refer to as cactus pose. And uh and I
didn't even think about it until today. You know, I've
been reading about about the Sorrow all week, and I'm like, oh, yeah,
it's a soorrow post basically, like that is what that is?
How iconic this particular species of cactus is.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Right, because cactus pose, you could just be a column,
so it's great, or it could be like you do
a kind of twister tangle thing because you're a prickly
pear or something.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, or you're like a ural cactus, like get down
and just make a ball. Yeah, it's like be more
specific yogis.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yeah, it's like saying animal pose.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeahs. But this also brings up another thing about the
suaro that's so iconic is that it lends itself very
easily to our anthropomorphizing it. You know, because they're tall,
they have a like, I don't want to overstate it,
like it's not like these things universally look like people,
(06:22):
and they are, you know, and they're often taller than people.
They don't always have the two arms, but they're close enough.
And granted, you know, things don't have to be very
close for them for us to answerpromorphize them. But yeah,
we see them and we think of some sort of
a towering human form, sometimes with limbs reaching towards the sky.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
I remember drawing this cacti all the time when I
was a kid. I think in part because I liked
drawing desert scenes and they were sort of characteristic flora
of the desert. I you know, I wasn't making geographic
distinctions so I'm sure if I was trying to draw
the pyramids, I would draw it, you know, suaro cactus.
(07:05):
But also because of what you're talking about, because they
have that anthropomorphic quality, you could put sunglasses and a
hat on them, and I certainly did, but I would
go a step beyond and say, actually, they're not just anthropomorphic,
they're friendly. They're a certain type of anthropomorphic because of
the posture of the arms. Now, as you say correctly,
(07:28):
it's not just that they always have a central column
in two arms, but sometimes in nature they do. Sometimes
they got weirder arrangements, but you really do see that
two arm human arrangement out there in the world sometimes,
and because of the posture of the arms, they appear
to be either saying hello with one arm raised above
(07:49):
the other, or cheering with both arms raised, or maybe
doing the you know, the field goal like you were
saying the football field goal.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
I guess it's also cornholio arms, right, that's right, Beavis, Yeah,
I need to But yeah, either way, it is a
positive kind of posture.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
It suggests a friendliness. Whether you're saying hello or cheering,
that's a that's positive emotion in the posture. So I
don't know. It's it's not the only thing in nature
that looks like a human standing up, but it's kind
of cheery in the way that it resembles a human.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, and I mean there are a number of things
also playing into this. For the vast majority of cases,
they are not harmful to people. You know they are.
There is a gentle giant sense to them. And they
are pretty much the tallest natural organisms within their ecosystem,
and so they really stand out, you know, they are.
(08:41):
They are the giants of their ecosystem, of the snorin desert.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
I wanted a minute ago, you were talking about their
use as as like sprites or decoration in video games,
sometimes just in the background. But I was remembering this also,
not think you mentioned Super Mario World. I don't particularly
remember that, But I have a more obscure video game memory,
which is of a game called Bunks Adventure for the
Turbographics sixteen. I was playing a little off the beaten path,
(09:08):
and I was a kid. There were some This is
a game where you play as sounds weird to describe.
I think you are a baby caveman who fights little
dinosaurs and you know, infected mammals and stuff by headbutting it.
Your head is your weapons, so you head butt things
and you can, you know, so you run around these
(09:29):
prehistoric landscapes full of dinosaurs. You know, let's put aside
the well actually of you know, dinosaurs and humans living
at the same time. But you're battling dinosaurs by headbutting them.
And one of the levels takes place in the desert,
and there are indeed these cactus enemies and they're clearly
siguaro modeled because they they've got arms like this, or
sometimes they flip the arms one up and one down,
(09:51):
but you know they're they're doing the bent arms like that,
and they've got the central column. And they also have
zany faces with yellow eyes going like whoa, whoa, whoa,
and you know, going oh with their mouth. They're kind
of doing the they're kind of doing the YouTube thumbnail
face or it's like wow, uh and uh. I think
if you jumped on them they would they would poke you.
(10:11):
So that's what But this burned in my memory as
a child. I'm sure when I was drawing cacti, I
was drawing those things.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Now they're not wearing sunglasses, but there does appear to
be a deret actyl that is wearing sunglasses here? Is
that true?
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah, that's right, Okay, I don't remember. I think that's
just another thing to headbutt. Yeah, when when all you've
got is ahead, the world looks like a nail.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
All right, So let's come back to this name. That
is a scientific name for the war the suaro cactus
Carnegia gigantia. All right, So gigantia makes sense, you know, giant.
Clearly this is a big cactus. But where do we
get carnegia? Uh, some of you might be wondering, Hey,
is this cactus by any chance named after Andrew Carnegie?
(10:59):
The sky is bored American steel industrialist of the late
Gilded Age and early Progressive Age.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
That's what I was wondering.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yes, and it is absolutely the case. It is absolutely
named after him.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
And did he invent this cactus?
Speaker 2 (11:12):
No? No, But the story is actually really interesting and
ended up sort of getting like two versions of the
story of the same story here. So initially I was
looking at this was an article by the New York
Botanical Garden. It's titled This is from twenty twenty, titled
the Suaro Cactus emblematic plant of the American West and
(11:35):
the New York Botanical Garden. This was by Barbara M.
Years and this is just a little history, you know,
brief history of the cactus and its Western classification. And
so I'm gonna I'm gonna roll through some of this here.
So the cactus is described in the West, apparently first
(11:57):
by US Mexico Boundary survey bytanist and explorer Charles Perry
between eighteen forty eight and eighteen fifty three, though he
did not bring a specimen back with him, but he
brings back word and writings about them. Okay, Then Cacti
botanist George Engelman expands on Perry's work and names the
(12:17):
new cactus serious gigantius. And I want to reference here
that there's another My main book that I turned to
research for this episode is The Soarro Cactus, a Natural
History from the University of Arizona Press by David Yetman,
Alberto Broquz, Kevin Holteen, and Michael Sanderson. An excellent book
(12:42):
that I highly recommend. And so I'm also going to
have some additional thoughts from them. But they include in
their book one of the images that Englman created of
this specimen of cactus, and it is it is pretty
amazing because the scale of the suaro is bonkers. They're
depicting a cactus significantly larger and taller than any known specimen,
(13:05):
and the authors of the book point out that the
picture is also quote a tad romantic.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
It's funny because from this illustration, I do get the
real sense of it. Like if you've never seen a
suarro before and you'd only seen this picture and then
you came across one, you could probably recognize it. You
may like, oh, that's what I saw on the picture
in this book. At the same time, yeah, it does
seem a little oh, it feels a little beyond real.
(13:30):
It feels a little fantasy, like an illustration from an
alien planet. And it's got I don't know, something about
the angles are a little too regular here, like it
actually has kind of right angles in all the arms
and the arrangement. Just feel something's a little off.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, yeah, I mean besides the size, Yeah, yeah, I
mean he is I think leaning into the majesty of
the suaro here and attempting to capture it and succeeding
in capturing that while also kind of fudging the scale
of everything, and to your point, like the desert seeming
like an alien world, I mean, it does, you know,
And then that is the impression it leaves on. One
(14:10):
I toured while I was in Arizona, toured a Frank
Loyd Wright's house out there, and one of the things
they said was that that right would describe the surrounding
desert landscape as being like the bottom of the ocean,
and then looking out on it, he felt like he
was at the bottom of the sea. And so, you know,
those kinds of observations I think are valid in common.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
That's kind of funny because I was thinking of this
illustration of the Suarro as being like a human made
antenna of some sort. So if it's the bottom of
the ocean, it's kind of the eltannan antenna out there
in the desert, which in reality was not an antenna
but was a sponge absolutely you know, wildlife. So yeah,
that is interesting, though I feel like we want to
(14:52):
be careful at the same time that we don't sell
short how giant these things can get, Like this picture
might be bit exaggerated, but these things can in their maturity,
can become absolutely huge. They grow to like seventy feet
or something.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah, yeah, a few numbers on that. So we're talking
occasional heights of twelve meters or forty feet, and fifteen
meters or fifty foot specimens are seen from time to time,
and then the record this, according to that University of
Arizona book, was a twenty three meter or seventy eight
foot sorrow found near Cave Creek, Arizona, that was sadly
(15:31):
toppled by winds in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Okay, so above seventy feet is not impossible, but is exceptional.
But it would not be unusual to get mature cacti
of the species that are like fifty feet right.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
The ones in this image, though, I'm thinking, are like
one hundred and twenty feet. Okay, yeah, if I'm sort
of like stacking my people correctly, because the image shows
some little humans in the foreground here. Yeah, all right,
So pictures of the cactus are making their way back
to New York, and this is the point where, according
(16:07):
to that New York Botanical Garden article, enters New York
Botanical Garden founder Nathaniel Britton and fellow botanist Joseph N.
Rose and they decide at some point in this that, Okay,
this cactus really needs its own genus, and they decide
to name it after Andrew Carnegie and write to him
in nineteen oh two to ask his permission to do so,
(16:30):
and that article of the New York Botanical Garden. I
do really love the response, I assume via telegram that
comes from Carnegie's secretary informing them that mister Carnegie quote
asked me to say that he is greatly honored by
the proposal and will do his best to live up
to it.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Can I be as grand as a cactus right now?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
At this point, you may have a number of thoughts
about on this. You know, you might well find it
horrid to imagine that this long time din of the
desert that humans had known about for millennia should be
named after a New York City industrialist, robber baron, if
you will. And I'm not saying that that judgment is
completely invalid. But on the other hand, Carnegie became a
(17:16):
devoted philanthropist late in life, and funds from his fortune
helped establish for starters the Desert Botanical Laboratory, founded near Tucson,
and I believe nineteen oh three in addition to various
other philanthropic venturers championing things like world peace, education, scientific research. So,
in short, if you're looking at all the various monopoly
(17:37):
maned tycoons of the day, Andrew Carnegie is arguably not
the worst by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
I haven't done enough reading comment confidently on that, but
it's true. My general impression is, yeah, that he's more
invested in philanthropy than some of the others of his time,
and certainly than some of our time.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah. Yeah, But you still might say, well, does he
deserve to have a cactus named after him? Maybe not.
And the interesting thing is, I don't think even Carnegie
thought that a cactus should be named after him, Because
when I was well, when I finally got to the
part of the University of Arizona book that I referenced
earlier where they talk about the Carnegie situation, the way
they tell it is that the Desert Laboratory in Tucson, Yes,
(18:21):
acquired much of its early funding from Carnegie, and they
invited him out to visit the site, and during his visit,
they showed him some suarros and told him that the
plant had been named for him in like a blatant
attempt to flatter him, and he did not take it
well that he saw this as just naked pandering and
was like, you know, how, why are you renaming this
(18:43):
Like surely this species was already known to humans. It's
too you know, outrageous and obvious a specimen that you know.
He did not like this. He did continue to fund
the Desert the Desert Laboratory, however, and I'm assuming if
we're to sort of piece these two stories is together.
His secretary at least responds with a nice note later on,
(19:04):
but it sounds like in the moment he maybe did
not see this as is a great thing that the
skeptics was being named after him, and then did not
see why it was necessary and again saw it as
just naked pandering.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Well, I can appreciate not wanting to be pandered to
in that way, And in my case, if somebody tried
to name a species after me, I think I would
be embarrassed.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
You heard it here, folks. If you're out there listening
and you're thinking about naming a species after Joe McCormick,
do not do it.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
That's going to happen. You never know I mean, I'm
not gonna be mad, but I'm not asking for that.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
What have you discovered though?
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I don't know I'd find that unlikely, but who knows.
Where were we though? But oh wait, so but doesn't
it retain the Carnegie name? So it is an issue
like he didn't love this, but they was like, well,
we already had the place cards printed out.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Yeah, it's stuck like that is still the Suaro's scientific classification.
You can anywhere you read about it. So I had
read about it in the past, clearly when I'd gone
to various like desert botanical gardens and so forth, but
I hadn't really noticed it and questioned the name until
this research.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, maybe it blends enough in with
some other biological sounding words like carnegiea carnotaurus kind of
or is it like carnos something sounds like meat or flesh.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I don't know, yeah, Or it's one of those things
where at first I was like is it named after Carnegie?
And then like, well, maybe it's not named after the
most obvious Carnegie out there. I'm just jumped to conclusions.
But no, the conclusion would be correct, all right, So
(20:48):
we already talked about just how tall this particular cactus
can get. It is indeed a desert giant, the tallest
and largest cactus in the United States, and the tallest
deser planned in the US as well. If you dip
down into the territory of Mexico proper, there is a
variety of related cactus called the Mexican giant cardone or
(21:13):
the elephant cactus, and that one can grow larger. Though.
This is one of those things where it's like, what
is the tallest cactus now versus what is the tallest
cactus ever? You can kind of go back and forth
on that. But the authors of the University of Arizona
book note that the exceptional specimen from Cave Creek, Arizona,
(21:37):
the one that was like seventy eight feet tall, This
would have dwarfed the oldest known living cactus species today.
Presumably they're referring to an elephant cactus. Yeah, but still,
anyway you slice it, really tall cactus. They're the tallest
plants in there in their ecosystem, and yeah, they really
stand out. They define their part of the Sonoran Desert.
(21:59):
And I remember being really struck by them the first
time that I visited Arizona because when you leave the
airport in Phoenix, they're basically there. Like, they don't just
dot the landscape outside of the city. You will find
them throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Yeah, speaking to their size and interactions with humans, maybe
this is a good place to mention. You know, there
is at least one famous souaro cactus related death which
I was reading about. I got there actually by way
of a song. So there is a song by so
(22:35):
I've read somewhere about the song. I went and listened
to the song. It's by a Texas band called the
Austin Lounge Lizards, and it is a Western style ballad
that I think is somewhat satirical because it is talking
about this character sort of going out and suiting up
for battle against a cactus. And so it's telling the
(22:56):
true to life story of a guy named David Grundman
who was crushed by a falling souarro after he shot
it in. I guess it was the year nineteen eighty one,
I think, because I was looking for a little more
on this and I found a New York Times article
from nineteen eighty two which says, quote last February twenty seven,
(23:17):
year old David M. Grundman took to the desert near
here with a shotgun and two rifles and began blasting
away at a twenty three foot tall Souarro cactus. The cactus,
mortally wounded by the gunfire, suddenly toppled over on mister Grundman,
crushing him to death. From that, it does kind of
sound like the whole thing fell over from the trunk,
(23:39):
But based on other summaries of the story I was reading,
it sounds more like one of the arms fell off
and like it fell onto his car and killed him.
So I'm not sure exactly which version of the story
is correct there, but yet it is verified that it
in some way this guy was killed by shooting at
a cactus until it fell on him.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Well, you know, we do not take delight in human
death here on stuff will blow your mind. But yeah,
there is something about the story that maybe inspires morbid humor.
I don't know. Maybe it's the fact that it kind
of reminds one of Don Quixote going up against the
windmills or something, you know, And you know, it seems
like a on the whole very avoidable death as long
(24:21):
as you don't go out and start shooting at the
basis of cacti that are not asking for it.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
It does raise questions, Yes, what did the cactus do
to provoke this? It doesn't seem like anything could have
could have been been justifiable. So yeah, so it seems
not advisable to go shooting at cactus, especially if you're
standing close to them. But yeah, not really at all.
I mean, why do you need to shoot a cactus?
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah, I think there's part of this situation too, might
be like a basic tendency to misunderstand not how big
they are, but also just how heavy they are.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Oh yeah, because you might assume they're they're kind of
like soft and light or something.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, or like a like an inflatable from a used
car dealership or something. But now these are stout. They
can get quite heavy. They're like eighty percent water. I
believe that's the percent. I will come back to it
here in a bit, but yeah, these are these are
these are hefty, hefty specimens. Now, before we talk more
about the sorrow, I wanted to talk a little bit
(25:21):
about cactuses in general, cactus origins and getting into why
the cactus unlike other succulents are native to the Americus.
So I'm not gonna spend a ton of time on this,
but basically, here's the here's the quick and dirty version.
So cactus origins in general date back to the mid
Tertiary period, so roughly twenty three to forty million years
(25:44):
ago we're talking about with this period, and it concerns
a period when we had like a great drying out
on a kind of harsh earth. This great drying out
allowed the evolution of various life forms that could survive
and or exploit dry, cooler temperatures and low rainfall. So
the authors of that University of Arizona book right that
(26:05):
this was a time during which the North American horses,
large South American birds, giant crocs, and prehistoric whales did
very well. And it's also when the oldest cactus species
seem to have diverged around thirty five million years ago
in South America, and this would have been long after
the split from Africa, thus the American isolation of the cactus.
(26:29):
So after these new this new type of plant life
gains a foothold, cactuses continue to spread and evolve and
fill new niches in response, to changing ecosystems, and eventually
we reach the point where today we have between something
like fourteen hundred and eighteen hundred and fifty cactus species
across one hundred and twenty five genera. You'll find cactus.
(26:52):
The numbers vary depending on who's doing accounting, but you'll
find cactuses as far north as into Canada. But in
general they grow small and fewer the farther north you
go after a certain point. And as we'll come back to,
part of this has to do with a cactus species
ability to survive freezes. But you know, cactuses come in
(27:13):
all forms. They fill various plant in inches, and they
range from very small and shrub like things to huge
treelike plants like the souarro. Again, these are the largest
of the tree like cacti.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Now, you mentioned that you know they have this sensitivity
to climate factors, and that's not only true for cacti
as a whole, but it is true even within a species.
So I don't know, I don't want to over undercut
you if you plan to talk about this later, but
one thing I was reading about was that you find
(27:50):
very different growth patterns for swaro itself depending on just
like what side of a mountain it's on.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, Like, for instance, I'm to understand the aerials space
different differently on on cacti than this suaros, depending on
where they're growing. These are the little the little like
nubs that the spines grow out of. Oh okay, yeah,
so yeah, speaking of spines, obviously cacti differ from plants
(28:17):
and that they have these spines. These like when you
draw a cactus as a child, what are you drawing
on there? You're drawing the little spines, Like that's probably
one of the most.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Love drawing those.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Fun.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
I would I would draw a cactus with like a marker,
the green part with a marker and then get a
little mechanical pencil and do all the spines.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
M hmm.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah, yeah, that was fun.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, and yeah. These are evolutionarily derived from leaves, which
like new shoots, flowers, and fruits on a cactus, they
grow out of. These areoles, which the authors of the
University of Arizona book describe as felty lumps on the cactus.
And yeah, they're distributed in different ways in different species,
and even within a single species, things can laid out
(29:00):
a little bit differently. Except for a few primitive cactus species.
Cactuses generally lack leaves, though some species like the Prickly pair,
produce rudimentary leaves early in development. Leaves, though, are in
general too costly and too much of a water loss
for a cactus. There are also a few isolated cactus
(29:21):
species that lack spines. Now with the soarro, the spines
are white, up to five centimeters in length and space
generally around three centimeters apart. The spines, as it turns out,
produce rings as the plant grows and as it ages,
which botanists can then date. And why do cactuses in
(29:41):
general have spines? Well, well, I think we know the
most obvious reason, and that is to punish those that
would attempt to touch them, hug them, eat of them,
and so forth, to provide protection right mainly against herbivores.
But in addition to this, cactus spines boast various other
purposes that are pretty fascinating. But also it may not
seem as as obvious, you know, and of course all
(30:04):
these different things can work together at the same time.
But they can provide shade against sunburn for the for
these plants in their desert environments, they can trap heat
and help with freeze protection in colder climates. In some species,
spines may also help in moisture harvesting. Like you read
about these different cactuses that basically like drink the fog
(30:27):
and so forth. Cactus fruits also tend to be spiny
as well, protecting the fruits until they've reached the point
where they can ripen. At least, so there are a
number of different cactus fruits that as they ripen, the
spines kind of become less operational, so that the fruit
can then be eaten, the seeds can be spread, and
(30:49):
so forth. And though of course in this you get
into corresponding adaptations from all the organisms involved. You know,
some animals have spine management adaptations or techniques. Let's see,
on top of this, have cactus flowers in general, they
tend to be very colorful and stand out to attract pollinators.
I think we'll come back to some of that regarding
(31:09):
the souarro. And then also we should know that cacti
compensate for their lack of leaves by carrying out photosynthesis
through the skin and outer stems.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
So this is why the stem itself of the cactus
is often green then that's because that's where the photosynthesis
is happening, is where the chlorophyll.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Needs to be right right, and also where the water
ends up being stored. So the authors of the University
of Arizona book point out that during the driest parts
of the year, the souaro's water it's excellent water conservation
is very obvious because they'll remain very green while upland
trees and shrubs basically become just brown and dried up
(31:50):
in appearance, even though they're still alive. They just they
basically look dead, but the cactus is still green now.
Souarros are columnar cacti, which means that their stem or
(32:12):
trunk and sometimes their limbs resemble columns. You know that
they're pretty, uh, pretty vertical in their structure for the
most part, not counting you know, in the arms and
so forth. But like a column, it is a strong,
stable structure. Uh. The sorrow in particular boasts the system
of ribs. These are rod like woody structures inside the
(32:35):
cactus that provides strength and durability and as a if
these cactus specimens are hurt or certainly after they die,
this this rib like structure remains and it begins to
create these very vivid, like spectacular scenes for the onlooker.
You will see examples of this, and it can take
(32:58):
on this, you know, almost kind of ghoulish appearance, because again,
already we look at these cac dyeing, we think about humans,
and we compare them to humans, and now we see
something that looks like bones inside of them.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Looks almost like a cross between bones and veins. Yeah yeah,
but it does have very much the appearance unlike other plants.
I can think of as the appearance of skin pulled
back from a human being and you're seeing the structures underneath.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah yeah. Also reminds me very much of the monster
from I'm Married an alien from outer Space.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, a bit of that. But Robi,
particularly what I was just saying applies to one picture
I put in the outline for you to look at
of one where it's the outer covering that originally had
the spines and the green flesh is not completely gone,
but it is sort of peeling away, and so there's
a big window to look in at the underlying rib structure,
(33:54):
and it does look somewhat grotesque, and yeah, it looks
like it looks like one of those eighteenth cent illustrations
of like a you know, a dissection of a human
body and showing the layers underneath with the nerves and
the veins and everything.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Yeah. Absolutely, Now, columnar Cacti exists throughout the Americas, but
the the suaros survives far further north than any of
them due to its ability to survive mild freezes. And
apparently a lot of this has to do with just
the mass of the of of this particular plant, and
they can because they can survive a few hours of
(34:29):
below freezing temps like this, and on top of, on
top of just like the pure mass aspect of it,
it seems like there are environmental aspects of their range
in the sonor and that allows them to sort of
cheap by in colder months. So this has to do
with things like mountain shielding from certain wind patterns and
also passive heat storage and surrounding rocks.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yeah, so I'm to understand it's kind of like the
gambit is, we may get freezing temperatures, but they will
not law quite long enough to kill the cactus and
specifically or.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
To overcome our defenses against them.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Yeah, and we mentioned like differences in the sorrow depending
on where it's growing. I've read that most northern Solaro
specimens have spines to protect the ends of their frost
sensitive branches, so they'll be like extra spine growths there
that are just adding. It's like a little sweater that
they've made out of themselves for themselves, out of spines.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
I was thinking, it's like putting covers on your outdoor
water faucets during the winter.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, except made out of spines. Now, I
want to come back to that book, the Soorrow Cactus.
I want to read a quick quote from it. They
write that quote, since soarros are about eighty percent water,
we can accurately view them as standing drums of water
that are effectively sealed from the outside. They point out
(35:57):
that the water inside the cactus is heavy. It's laden
or spiked with heavy isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen, and
this actually ends up marking the tissues of organisms that
consume bits of the cactus, such as you know, fruits
and nectar, in a way that has allowed scientists to
discover how much moisture various desert species gain from the
(36:20):
sooro in particular.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Oh okay, so by you take an animal and then
you look at the relative amount of deuterium or whatever
in it's in the water in its body, you can
tell if it's been getting into this cactus as opposed
to just rain water or something else.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Right, And I have I have not yet taken a
look at any of the specific studies that have done this,
but but it is. It is reference in the book here,
and I thought that was pretty fascinating. Like, you can
tell do they drink of the sooro? Do they depend
on it? There's like this, there's like this this water
tag in their body that lets you know that they do. Yeah, now,
speaking of that water, I think we may come back
(36:58):
to this in the next episode. But we need to
stress that whatever you have seen in a cartoon or
in an old Western is not a true indicator of
the potability of the water inside a saro cactus. I
have a vague recollection of maybe a Bugs Bunny cartoon
where someone just comes up to one of these cacti
(37:20):
and just slices it and then drinks out of it.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Yeah, that's my memory. When I was a kid, I
knew I didn't know much about the desert. But I
knew a few animal facts, and I knew that if
you're lost in the desert, you can drink water out
of a cactus.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Yeah, That's that's what we were taught via our media,
and this is absolutely not the case. The water inside
they're filled with water, but also high concentrations of acids
and alkaloids that falls short of like outright poison, but
would prove disastrous for human consumption, even in or perhaps
especially in a survival scenario.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
What kind of disastrous like complex It just like gives
you diarrhea, Yeah, like that.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Sort of thing, Like do you on top of being
trapped in the desert and dealing with dehydration, do you
also need like chronic diarrhea on top of everything else?
You definitely do not. So, yeah, the water inside the
cactus is not good to go or anything like that. Now,
you know, We'll come back to the ways that humans
(38:19):
have used this particular species of cactus, because not to
say that it's off limits to humans. Humans have made
use of the swallow cactus for thousands of years, and
there are various valid ways for them to take advantage
of its moisture.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
But it's not just like cut and cut and chug.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Yeah, no, no cutting chug, No sticking a spiggott in
it and then drinking from it like a water fountain
or what have you. It's a lot more complicated than that.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Well, folks, we just looked at the time and we
realized we really don't have time today to get into
some of the other stuff we were going to talk about,
So we're probably going to save some of those sections
for next time and come back and have even more
to say about them. So join us again for part two,
And this will be a great place to end part
one because it will direct extra special emphasis to the
(39:07):
advice to not just cut and chug.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yes, yes, by all means, go out into the wild
and look upon these giants of the desert, but just
don't mess with them, don't shoot them, don't try to
drink them. Let them do their thing and you do yours.
And in the next episode we'll get into a little
bit more about what their thing is, and we'll talk
about the way that humans have utilized the suaro cactus,
(39:33):
you know, throughout their cohabitation with these giants.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
Yeah, if you feel tempted to interact with them, you
can wave back to them. You know, you can mimic
their posture, you can cheer for them, you can tell
them it's good.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah, yeah, I think Arizona State regulations would be okay
with that, not so much the blasting or the harvesting. Right,
all right, we're going to close it out then, but
we'll just remind everybody out there that's Stuff to Blow
Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, episodes
on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do short form episodes,
and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
(40:06):
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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