Competing Giants
by Jon Burch Photography
Title
Competing Giants
Artist
Jon Burch Photography
Medium
Photograph - Digital Capture/digital Painting
Description
The Saguaro Cacti or Carnegiea gigantea) is a large, tree-sized plant species in the monotypic genus Carnegiea, which can grow to be over 70 feet tall. It is native to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, the Mexican state of Sonora, and the Whipple Mountains and Imperial County areas of California. The saguaro blossom is the State Wildflower of Arizona.
Saguaros have a relatively long life span. They take up to 75 years to develop a side arm. A saguaro without arms is called a spear. The arms are grown to increase the plant's reproductive capacity leading to more flowers and fruit. The growth rate of saguaros is strongly dependent on precipitation; saguaros in drier western Arizona grow only half as fast as those in and around Tucson. Some specimens may live for more than 150 years; the largest known saguaro is the Champion Saguaro, growing in Maricopa County reaches heights of 45 feet with a girth of around 10 feet. However, these cacti can grow anywhere from 40 to 60 feet tall. They grow slowly from seed rather than cuttings. Whenever it rains, saguaros soak up the rainwater, the cactus visibly expand, holding in the the rainwater. Slowly the cacti arms conserve the water and slowly consume it.
The spines on saguaro having a height less than six feet grow rapidly, up to a tenth of an inch per day. When held up to the light or bisected, alternating light and dark bands transverse to the long axis of spines can be seen and have been correlated to daily growth. In columnar cacti, spines almost always grow in aureoles which originate at the apex of the plant. The individual spine growth reach mature size in the first season and then cease to grow. Areoles are moved to the side and the apex continues to grow upwards placing the older spines are towards the base of a columnar cactus and newer spines are near the apex.
The night blooming white and yellow cactus flowers appear April through June and the sweet, ruby-colored fruit matures by late June. Saguaro flowers are require cross pollination with large quantities of pollen required for complete pollination in the numerous ovules. A well pollinated fruit will contain several thousand tiny seeds.
The major pollinators are bats, primarily the lesser long-nosed bat, feeding on the nectar from the night-blooming flowers, which often remain open in the morning. There are a number of floral characteristics geared toward bat pollination: nocturnal opening of the flowers, nocturnal maturation of pollen, very rich nectar, position high above the ground, durable blooms that can withstand a bat's weight, and fragrance emitted at night. One additional piece of evidence is that the amino acids in the pollen appear to help sustain lactation in bats. The flowers remain open into the daylight hours and continue to produce nectar after sunrise. Doves and bees appear to be the primary daytime pollinators.
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Cumulus clouds are a type of low-level cloud that can have noticeable vertical development and clearly defined edges. Cumulo- means "heap" or "pile" in Latin. They are often described as "puffy" or "cotton-like" in appearance, and generally have flat bases. The cumulus clouds, being low-stage clouds, are generally less than 6,500 feet in altitude unless they are the more vertical cumulus congestus form. Cumulus clouds may appear by themselves, in lines, or in clusters.
These clouds are often precursors of other types of cloud, such as cumulonimbus, when influenced by weather factors such as instability, moisture, and temperature gradient. Normally, cumulus clouds produce little or no precipitation, but they can grow into the precipitation-bearing congestus or cumulonimbus clouds. Cumulus clouds can be formed from water vapor, supercooled water droplets, or ice crystals, depending upon the ambient temperature. They come in many distinct subforms, and generally cool the earth by reflecting the incoming solar radiation. Cumulus clouds are part of the larger category of cumuliform clouds, which include stratocumulus clouds, cumulonimbus clouds, cirrocumulus clouds, and altocumulus clouds.
Cumulus clouds form via atmospheric convection as air warmed by the surface begins to rise. As the air rises, the temperature drops cause the relative humidity to also rise. If convection reaches a certain level the relative humidity reaches one hundred percent. At this point a positive feedback ensues: since the humidity is above 100%, water vapor condenses, releasing latent heat, warming the air and spurring further convection.
In this phase, water vapor condenses on various condensation nuclei present in the air, forming the cloud. This creates the characteristic flat-bottomed puffy shape associated with cumulus clouds. The size of the cloud depends on the profile of the atmosphere and the presence of any temperature inversions. During the convection, surrounding air is mixed with the thermal and the total mass of the ascending air increases.
Rain forms in a cumulus cloud via a process involving two non-discrete stages. The first stage occurs after the droplets coalesce onto the various nuclei. Surface tension in the water droplets provides a slightly higher pressure on the droplet, raising the vapor pressure by a small amount. The increased pressure results in those droplets evaporating and the resulting water vapor condensing on the larger droplets. Due to the extremely small size of the evaporating water droplets, this process becomes largely meaningless after the larger droplets have grown to around 20 to 30 micrometers, and the second stage takes over. In the accretion phase, the raindrop begins to fall, and other droplets collide and combine with it to increase the size of the raindrop.
The original photograph was made with a Canon camera prior to the application of the oil process.
Image copyright 2013 Jon Burch Photography
Uploaded
April 21st, 2013
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Comments (5)
Inge Johnsson
How lovely, Jon. Now I yearn to go to Arizona almost as much as I want to up to the Pacific Northwest. F/V
Jon Burch Photography replied:
Thank you Inge! I understand completely. Just got back from Sedona and the end of this week heading to Oregon and the Pacific.