{"id":511,"date":"2010-05-18T13:25:07","date_gmt":"2010-05-18T20:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.russbishop.com\/blog\/?p=511"},"modified":"2015-11-06T10:17:38","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T18:17:38","slug":"desert-sentinel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/desert-sentinel\/","title":{"rendered":"Desert Sentinel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/russbishop.photoshelter.com\/img-show\/I0000W9ucd9Wr2dM\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"905978hx.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.photoshelter.com\/img-get\/I0000W9ucd9Wr2dM\/s\/400\/604\/905978hx.jpg\" alt=\"Evening light on Saguaro Cactus under blue sky and clouds, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona (Russ Bishop\/Russ Bishop Photography)\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The saguaro cactus <em>(Carnegiea gigantea)<\/em>\u00a0is an icon of the American southwest. These lone sentinels thrive in\u00a0the harsh environment\u00a0of the Sonoran Desert,\u00a0which\u00a0can exceed 120 degrees\u00a0in the summer, but is also one of the wettest deserts in North America.\u00a0\u00a0Encompassing parts of Arizona, California and northern Mexico, this region averages 3 to 16 inches of rain a year and has two rainy seasons, one in the summer and another in the winter, which sustains a wide range of flora\u00a0in addition to the saguaro.<\/p>\n<p>Mature saguaros can\u00a0reach up to 50 ft in height. They bloom for the first time when they are 50 \u2013 75 years old and\u00a0may\u00a0live to\u00a0150 \u2013 200 years (and weigh\u00a0up to 10 tons). Ironically, the\u00a0saguaro is\u00a0so synonymous with the southwest that\u00a0their likeness has been used in commercials and western films in places like Texas and New Mexico where they have never lived in the wild.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9Russ Bishop\/All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea)\u00a0is an icon of the American southwest. These lone sentinels thrive in\u00a0the harsh environment\u00a0of the Sonoran Desert,\u00a0which\u00a0can exceed 120 degrees\u00a0in the summer, but is also one of the wettest deserts in North America.\u00a0\u00a0Encompassing parts of Arizona, California and northern Mexico, this region averages 3 to 16 inches of rain a year &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/desert-sentinel\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Desert Sentinel&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,173,8,20],"tags":[37,87,56,36,425,569,116,117],"class_list":["post-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-landscape-photography","category-nature-photography","category-travel","tag-arizona","tag-cactus","tag-desert","tag-national-parks","tag-photography","tag-russ-bishop","tag-saguaro","tag-sonoran"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}