Who lives in this cactus?

Who you find living in any particular cactus will depend on when you look.

Many of the large holes in saguaros are originally drilled (although the process sounds more like a jack hammer than a drill) by Gila woodpeckers, who peck into the cactus to hollow out an area for a nest.

One interesting result is that the cactus, always fearful of losing moisture, forms dense scar tissue around the excavated area. This means that when the cactus dies and the flesh falls away, what’s left is the interesting lattice of cactus skeleton, plus an occasional hard rounded shape that looks something like a boot—so it is called a cactus boot. Native people gathered them and used them as containers for liquids.

Back to the cactus-dwellers. While the plant is still alive, these nests drilled inside saguaro cacti are prime real estate, the perfect place to find thorn-protected shelter until the kids grow up and fly away. At first, after the cactus heals and get less gooey, the  Gila Woodpeckers or related birds who excavated the nest holes get first dibs. But later years may bring entirely new sets of residents.

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Leafing so soon?

There are leaves and then there are leaves. And then there are cactus pads, like this wide flat prickly pear cactus pad, which are more like stems than leaves.

Because if you look closely, on the surface of this pad, you will see the actual leaves, small succulent pointy cones, next to their associated thorns, which form in the axil (that’s like the armpit!) of the leaves.

The thorns persist, as most desert dwellers know too well, but the little leaves fall off in a matter of days, another water-saving feature, so only the thorns and the thick-skinned pads, and the quickly hardening new pads, remain.

Stems or not, the pads, after the skin and thorns are very carefully removed, have been used for centuries as food by native civilizations in the desert