Desert Giant (pb)

Author: Barbara Bash
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
ISBN: 9781578050857
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40

Book Description
A venerable saguaro cactus stands like a statue in the hot desert landscape, its armlike branches reaching fifty feet into the air. From a distance it appears to be completely still and solitary--but appearances can be deceptive. In fact, this giant tree of the desert is alive with activity. Its spiny trunk and branches are home to a surprising number of animals, and its flowers and fruit feed many desert dwellers. Gila woodpeckers and miniature elf owls make their homes inside the saguaro's trunk. Long-nosed bats and fluttering white doves drink the nectar from its showy white flowers. People also play a role in the saguaro's story: each year the Tohono O'odham Indians gather its sweet fruit in a centuries-old harvest ritual. In this first volume of Sierra Club Books' Tree Tales series, a simple, easy-to-read text and appealing drawings document the life cycle of this amazing cactus tree and the creatures it helps to support. Readers will come away with a better understanding of and a lasting respect for this accomodating giant of the desert.

Cactus Desert

Author:
Publisher: Turtleback Books
ISBN: 9780613074261
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
For use in schools and libraries only. Explains how to investigate the plant and animal life found in a small section of the desert.

Clementina's Cactus

Author: Ezra Jack Keats
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0451479572
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 21

Book Description
Keats departs from his traditional style for his one and only wordless picture book, Clementina's Cactus. Clementina and her father are out for a walk in the desert when Clementina discovers a lone cactus, all shriveled and prickly. But Clementina discovers there is something beautiful hiding inside that thick skin.

A Cactus in the Desert

Author: Teresa Wairimu Kinyanjui
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789966749604
Category : Evangelists
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Book Description

The Saguaro Cactus

Author: David Yetman
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816540047
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
The saguaro, with its great size and characteristic shape—its arms stretching heavenward, its silhouette often resembling a human—has become the emblem of the Sonoran Desert of southwestern Arizona and northwestern Mexico. The largest and tallest cactus in the United States, it is both familiar and an object of fascination and curiosity. This book offers a complete natural history of this enduring and iconic desert plant. Gathering everything from the saguaro’s role in Sonoran Desert ecology to its adaptations to the desert climate and its sacred place in Indigenous culture, this book shares precolonial through current scientific findings. The saguaro is charismatic and readily accessible but also decidedly different from other desert flora. The essays in this book bear witness to our ongoing fascination with the great cactus and the plant’s unusual characteristics, covering the saguaro’s: history of discovery, place in the cactus family, ecology, anatomy and physiology, genetics, and ethnobotany. The Saguaro Cactus offers testimony to the cactus’s prominence as a symbol, the perceptions it inspires, its role in human society, and its importance in desert ecology.

Cactus Hotel

Author: Brenda Z. Guiberson
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805029604
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36

Book Description
"Describes the life cycle of the giant saguaro cactus, with an emphasis on its role as a home for other desert dwellers."--Title page verso.

A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert

Author: Steven J. Phillips
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520219809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 676

Book Description
"A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert provides the most complete collection of Sonoran Desert natural history information ever compiled and is a perfect introduction to this biologically rich desert of North America."--BOOK JACKET.

Sonoran Desert Plants

Author: Raymond M. Turner
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816525195
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Book Description
The Sonoran Desert, a fragile ecosystem, is under ever-increasing pressure from a burgeoning human population. This ecological atlas of the region's plants, a greatly enlarged and full revised version of the original 1972 atlas, will be an invaluable resource for plant ecologists, botanists, geographers, and other scientists, and for all with a serious interest in living with and protecting a unique natural southwestern heritage. An encyclopedia as well as an atlas, this monumental work describes the taxonomy, geographic distribution, and ecology of 339 plants, most of them common and characteristic trees, shrubs, or succulants. Also included is valuable information on natural history and ethnobotanical, commercial, and horticultural uses of these plants. The entry for each species includes a range map, an elevational profile, and a narrative account. The authors also include an extensive bibliography, referring the reader to the latest research and numerous references of historical importance, with a glossary to aid the general reader. Sonoran Desert Plants is a monumental work, unlikely to be superseded in the next generation. As the region continues to attract more people, there will be an increasingly urgent need for basic knowledge of plant species as a guide for creative and sustainable habitation of the area. This book will stand as a landmark resource for many years to come.

Cacti of the Desert Southwest

Author: Meg Quinn
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781933855370
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Deserts of the American Southwest are home to an incredible diversity of drought-tolerant plants, including many found nowhere else on earth. And no other group says desert quite like cacti. Their prickly nature notwithstanding, cacti are very fragile, as are the arid deserts they inhabit. In Cacti of the Desert Southwest, botanist and educator Meg Quinn describes eighty significant cacti of the Sonoran, Mojave, and Chihuahuan deserts, including several which are listed as threatened or endangered. Most are shown in full flower.

No Species Is an Island

Author: Theodore H. Fleming
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816537550
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 81

Book Description
In the darkness of the star-studded desert, bats and moths feed on the nectar of night-blooming cactus flowers. By day, birds and bees do the same, taking to blooms for their sweet sustenance. In return these special creatures pollinate the equally intriguing plants in an ecological circle of sustainability. The Sonoran Desert is the most biologically diverse desert in the world. Four species of columnar cacti, including the iconic saguaro and organ pipe, are among its most conspicuous plants. No Species Is an Island describes Theodore H. Fleming’s eleven-year study of the pollination biology of these species at a site he named Tortilla Flats in Sonora, Mexico, near Kino Bay. Now Fleming shares the surprising results of his intriguing work. Among the novel findings are one of the world’s rarest plant-breeding systems in a giant cactus; the ability of the organ pipe cactus to produce fruit with another species’ pollen; the highly specialized moth-cactus pollination system of the senita cactus; and the amazing lifestyle of the lesser long-nosed bat, the major nocturnal pollinator of three of these species. These discoveries serve as a primer on how to conduct ecological research, and they offer important conservation lessons for us all. Fleming highlights the preciousness of the ecological web of our planet—Tortilla Flats is a place where cacti and migratory bats and birds connect such far-flung habitats as Mexico’s tropical dry forest, the Sonoran Desert, and the temperate rain forests of southeastern Alaska. Fleming offers an insightful look at how field ecologists work and at the often big surprises that come from looking carefully at a natural world where no species stands alone.