What Is It? The Answer

The answer to the "What Is It?" photo I posted a while back is: a dead cactus. Surprising, the ribs of a cactus look a lot like wood when they dry out. Being an East Coast native, I am not often in contact with cacti, and for some reason always expected that a cactus would decay a lot like a rotten watermelon or some other fruit.

Cacti, as I was told in my grade school science classes, hold a lot of water. A person could tear the fleshy insides out, if stranded in a desert, and suck out the moisture. I always imagined this characteristic would make the inside of a cactus something like a watermelon. And watermelons are only protected by a thick, but fragile, shell. Wouldn't a cactus be similar? I was not disabused of this notion a couple years ago when I plugged two straight tee shots into a cactus on a Tucson golf course. I didn't see any sign of an inner wooden skeleton as my two balls disappeared into newly minted holes with a 'thump.'

As you can see by these photos, a dead cactus has a pretty sturdy rib structure that grows from the ground up, giving the cactus a strong inner framework. Some of these puppies grow to over 30 feet tall, so, like a tree, a wooden structure would well suit those cacti that reach abnormal heights. That's your biology lesson for the day.

Cactus Skeleton. Camelback Mountain, Phoenix, AZ. February 21, 2006.