The saguaro does not hurry

A saguaro spends its first decade getting to the height of a thumb. It will not flower until it is thirty-five, and most of them never grow an arm at all until they are past seventy. The ones you photograph with three arms held up like a cartoon are older than the road you drove in on.

What I find remarkable is not the slowness. It is that nothing about the plant looks like it is waiting. It is doing the whole job the entire time — holding water, holding its shape, feeding whatever turns up. The arms are not the point. They are what is left over after a very long time of getting the ordinary things right.

The ribs are the clever part. They work like a concertina: after rain the whole column swells and the pleats flatten out, and through a dry summer they draw back in until the plant is visibly thinner. A big one can carry a couple of hundred gallons and lose most of it without complaint.