Desert nights

Roger, do you have cacti in Oz? Or some intriguing (I choose this word carefully) variant, i.e. a kangaroo cactus?

There are no cacti native to Australia. Strange, but true.
There are a few imports which have really spread (gone feral), and there are cactus-growing societies.

Cheers

Australia proves that there’s more than one way for evolution to ‘solve’ essentially the same set of environmental constraints. Australia has huge deserts and no cacti. Plants and animals found different ways to cope than in Eurasia and the Americas. If we re wound history and set evolution off again from the start, who knows what would occur? It wouldn’t look the same for sure.

I don’t have as nice a photo of the saguaro flowers but here is one of the cactus itself. You can see how big they are and how burnt/leathery these ones in the burn area were.

flowers from different kinds of cactuses

flowers from different kinds of cactuses