Saguaros can live up to 200 years and grow as tall as 40 feet (12 metres). And that this could be sending them over the edge." "So part of our thinking is that there are still saguaros today that were compromised from what they went through in 2020. "Since 2020, we have had elevated mortality in our population of saguaros compared to mortality rates pre-2020," said Kimberlie McCue, the garden's chief science officer. These saguaros, a towering trademark of the Sonoran Desert landscape, were already stressed from record-breaking heat three years ago, and this summer's historic heat - the average temperature in Phoenix last month was 102.7 degrees Fahrenheit (39.3 degrees Celsius) - turned out to be the cactus needle that broke the camel's back. She advises people to give water and specialty fertilizer to a distressed tree or plant every other day and not to trim them.Īt the Desert Botanical Garden, three of the treasured institution's more than 1,000 saguaro cacti have toppled over or lost an arm in the last week, a rate that officials there say is highly unusual. "Twenty-year-old trees are losing all their leaves, or they're turning a crisp brown." "A lot of people are calling and saying their cactus is yellowing really hard, fell over or like broken arms, that sort of thing," Booth said.
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