Mike Breiding's Epic Road Trips: January 2025

19 January 2025
The Shiva Saguaro of the Avra Valley

If you are a lover of Saguaros and enjoy "Saguaro Watching," it does not take long to realize Saguaros come in all shapes and sizes. For some, seeking out and enjoying these sometimes freaky, bizarre, and awesome Saguaros is somewhat of a sport. Sort of like "peak bagging." We are always excited when we see a new Saguaro that is a bit on the unusual side. And that is what we would be doing today.

Several days ago, fellow hiker Mark Grossman sent me an email about a guided hike that was to be in the Ironwood Forest National Monument and the Avra Valley. This area is to the west of the Tucson Mountains and about a 30-minute drive from the Rancho Relaxo.
The name of the hike was "Saguaros Like You Have Never Seen Them." Mark and his partner Kathy knew Betsy and I were avid Saguaro Watchers and thought we would enjoy the "walk and talk" about the unusual Saguaros in the area.
Here is the notice from the Friends of the Ironwood Forest.

Thanks to recent time-lapse photography and careful observations, the Arizona Native Plant Society has managed to make sense of the unique population of multi-arm saguaros on the east border of IFNM along Avra Valley Road.
We will carpool west on Avra Valley Rd with four stops for an eye-opening learning tour about saguaros and their associated native plants. This will include a half-mile slow hike through a desert filled with saguaros like you have never seen them: multi-armed saguaros of all types and stages of development, a saguaro singularly preferred by flickers, a lightning-struck saguaro, multiple saguaro families around and under nurse trees, and telltale early signs of saguaro decline.
Finally we will drive west to an area where we will discuss the natural history of saguaro pollination and genetic relatedness between neighboring saguaros.

Source: Friends of Ironwood Forest

I immediately signed up Betsy and me, and we left the house at 7 am this morning to join the others for the "Saguaros Like You Have Never Seen Them."
The outing was led by John Scheuring and David Whitmer who were a treasure chest of information about Saguaros and Sonoran Desert ecology.

Here is what I would call your typical Saguaro, flanked by typical hikers of the Robust Elderly type. Robert, Debra, Betsy, Rob and Cindy.

Source: VedicDutura.com

Meet Shiva, the god of destruction, who destroys the universe to make way for rebirth.  Shiva is also known as the god of time, the cosmic dancer, and the patron of yoga, meditation, and the arts.
Many of the deities in Hinduism are depicted with multiple arms, which is a symbol of their power and ability to perform multiple tasks simultaneously.  

Meet "Shiva," the many-armed Saguaro of the Avra Valley. I have lost track of the number of times fellow hikers asked, "Have you seen the Shiva Saguaro?" or "Do you know where the Shiva Saguaro is located?". Now, after all these years, I can say "Yes." To both questions.
A recent count of the arms put that number at 123.
It is not just the number of arms that make this Saguaro unique; it is the so-called "second order" growth on some of the arms. By that I mean an arm growing out of an arm. "Third order" Saguaros have also been found. Mark and Kathy have seen one of the latter, and soon we will be making a pilgrimage to visit it.

On our way to the Waterman Restoration Site, we drove by this many-armed beauty. Mark and Kathy proved to be good scale bars, and you can see this one is not quite as tall as Shiva, but it may be some day.

A closer look at the multitude of arms growing out of the upper "trunk."

This is the Saguaro I am waiting to see. This painting "Saguaro Silhouettes Celebrating a Sonoran Sunset" by Lauri Kaye beautifully shows the womanly side of the Saguaro.

Stay tuned for more thrilling adventures of  "Mike and Betsy: Saguaro Hunters!"

 

See you next time...
Mike and Betsy

 

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