Flowers for Bats campaign
Greetings!

Saguaros are fruiting and agaves are blooming across southeastern Arizona! Have you seen saguaro fruits or agave flowers yet at your site?

Our Flowers for Bats Field Technician, Camille McCollum, took the photo at right of an Agave palmeri at Molino Basin last week. The flowers started opening several weeks ago on Mt Lemmon and will likely continue blooming for a few more weeks.

Love spending time on the trails? We are looking for volunteers to adopt trails to track flowering of agave! Available trails are listed on the Adopt a Trail map . You can visit as often as you choose. If you would like to adopt a trail, email erin@usanpn.org !
What you are reporting on saguaro and agave
You are reporting on columnar cacti and agave at 51 sites so far this year, up from 24 sites at the time of our last message.

In addition to our backyard observers, we have many partners who have already submitted data this year, including Tohono Chul, Tumamoc Hill, Borderlands Restoration, Tucson Botanical Garden, University of Arizona Campus Arboretum, and Watershed Management Group.
Thank you for your efforts!
Sites reporting on cacti and agave in 2019 in Southeastern Arizona. Colors correspond to the names of the species at the top. Darker colors indicate more observations submitted.
You started reporting open flowers for saguaros at the beginning of April. The proportion of individual saguaros with open flowers peaked in May, and started declining in June. The proportion of saguaros with ripe fruits started increasing in mid-June.
You have reported flowering in agave all across Southeastern Arizona. The map below shows sites that have reported either flowers or flower buds or open flowers for one of our four species of agave.
You started reporting open flowers for Agave americana in mid-May, Agave palmeri in late May, and Agave parryi in early June. You have not yet reported flowering in Agave deserti, which are much less common across the state.
Keep reporting your observations of agave flowers until all the flowers on the plant have dried.

You can also continue to report on saguaro fruiting. Watch out for a potential second round of saguaro flowering over the next few months!


Don't hesitate to contact erin@usanpn.org with any questions!
Earn your Flowers for Bats badge! You can earn this badge by observing one of the Flowers for Bats agaves or columnar cacti once a week for six separate weeks in the same year. See it on your Observation Deck .



Thank you for your contributions to this important project!
Contact
Erin Posthumus
erin@usanpn.org
520-621-1670
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