Few cacti are as popular as the The giant carnage. Much better known as Saguaro or Sahuaro, it is a very slow growing species with the ability to amaze anyone who goes to see it in its natural habitat: the Sonoran Desert.
It is not at all easy to find it for sale in nurseries, and when luck finally smiles on us, the price may surprise us quite a bit. And it can cost 1 euro per centimeter. Growing a beauty like this requires a lot, a lot of patience. To give you an idea of how much you need, you have to know that it takes 30 years to reach one meter in height. Incredible true?
The giant carnage It is the scientific name given to the tallest columnar cactus in the Sonoran Desert, and probably in the world. The species was described by Britton & Rose and published in Kakteenkunde in 1937, since then it began to become very popular among cactus lovers.
It has a columnar stem that can easily reach 12 meters and even more, and whose diameter is 65cm. It usually has branches in a maximum number of 7, but it is not uncommon to find it as a single stem. This stem is made up of between 12 and 24 ribs, which are well armed with thorns, the radial ones being 12cm and the central ones between 3 and 6cm. These are brown in color, but as the plant ages they turn white. It has a life expectancy of about 300 years.
The adult specimens flower from spring to early summer. Its large white flowers are nocturnal. They open when the sun goes down and close at dawn. The bats are in charge of pollinating them, a fact that causes a red and edible fruit to form that finishes maturing at the end of the summer season.
In cultivation the saguaro It is a cactus that to grow well needs a substrate that has excellent drainage (such as the pumice), a lot of sun and, above all, little watering. We must try to let the substrate that we put on it dry completely before watering, otherwise it would rot immediately. Likewise, we must pay it during spring and summer with fertilizers for cacti, following the instructions specified on the packaging.
For the cold in principle we will not have to worry, since it resists well to frost down to -9ºC once acclimatized. But if it is young, it is better to protect it from frost and especially from hail.