(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, a special episode all about desert plants.

(Tony) This is a beautiful place.

Somebody should do something about preserving this and protecting it for the future.

(Tom) From those who love them, to those who become obsessed with them.

(Robert) And I was addicted right away.

I bought a camera, I started taking pictures.

(Tom) To nurseries that sell them.

(Jared) What we really want people to do is to think of their backyards as a piece of a whole ecology.

(Tom) And even tips on what to plant in your yard.

(Adam) The other nice part about this tree in the home landscape is that it's one of our few native trees that don't bite back.

[music] [music] Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

And spring has arrived in the Sonoran Desert, so it's the best time of year now to plant in your landscape or your garden.

And we are going to dedicate this entire program to desert plants and those who love them.

First up is Tony Figueroa, whose passion for desert plants opened up all kinds of new possibilities for him.

(Tony) It was just so much stinknet.

It's like a four acre spot that is just tons of stinknet.

It's not 100% of the lot.

There's like spots here and there, but like an area.

(Tony) My name is Tony Figueroa.

I'm the Invasive Plants, Senior Program Manager at the Tucson Audubon.

"Good morning."

(Tony) We have a crew of 20 people that are permanent full-time employees managing invasive species throughout the region and trying to preserve the habitat that our wildlife and birds depend on.

[Gambel's quail calling] ♪ Ominous music (Tony) Stinknet, Oncosiphon, piluliferum.

It is a horrible noxious weed that as you can see is readily invading this vacant lot.

♪ Ominous music ♪ (Tony) This is salt cedar or Tamarix aphylla.

It is one of many species of the salt cedar family.

♪ Ominous music ♪ (Tony) This is one of our most invasive non-native grasses.

This is fountain grass, Pennisetum cetaceum.

♪ Ominous music (Tony) African sumac.

Sercia lancea.

It has a tremendous ability to invade riparian areas and any spot that has a little bit of extra moisture.

♪ Soft piano (Tony) It's important to protect our desert habitat because the Sonoran Desert unlike anywhere else on earth.

And it is so rich in plant species and animal species that if we degrade these lands with invasive species and let them take over it's going to outcompete our native plants.

And then beyond that it has fire risks associated with it.

(Tony) Native plants provide food resources for insects, for birds, for mammals, and it's just this whole ladder of sustainability for the desert creatures.

(Tony) We're here at my happy home.

My wife and I, Lindsay, we purchased this place back in 2010 on the east side of Tucson, not too far from Saguaro National Park.

The standard 70s era neighborhood on a quarter acre, your standard residential lot.

It was mostly bare soils except for this fig tree back here which as a Figueroa it meant a great deal to me to get a place that had a fig tree.

My Nana and Tata had a big fig tree in their backyard and it was always just a special connection with that smell of those plants.

I'm a Tucson native and grew up going camping, going hiking.

My dad had a had a camping club with me and my siblings called the Itchy Foot Campers.

I've always felt this love for nature and animals.

Growing up watching the Discovery Channel and the Desert Speaks, PBS Nova, Nature.

♪ Nature theme music (birds chirping) Oh yeah, this is my first flax of the year.

Wednesday was my big time to just geek out and learn and appreciate things.

But I never knew that that was a possibility for a career field.

My parents are both retired military now, and I always had this perception that you either join the military, you go into healthcare, you become a teacher or a lawyer.

Those are like the job fields available to be a successful adult.

So I didn't want to deal with blood and guts, so I decided to go into the pharmacy career path, and I worked as a pharmacy technician for a long time.

♪ gentle music (Tony) And then in 2010, my wife and I, we got married, and we started taking summer road trips.

She was a teacher, so we'd save all of our vacation for the summertime.

Just take a big road trip, just camping out of our car and occasionally in a motel when we needed to take a shower.

But we'd keep on going to national parks, national forests, national monuments.

Our biggest trip was 8,600 miles.

We went from here to the Florida Keys up to Maine and back.

And it was in doing this that I would just make the joke, "You know, man, this is a beautiful place."

"Somebody should do something about preserving this and protecting it for the future."

I went back to school, went to the U of A to get a degree in wildlife conservation management and the School of Natural Resources, and it was through doing that that I got exposed to a lot more opportunities.

And that was where I kind of just changed my whole career path was through hiking in the Tucson area, going to these beautiful places and realizing, "Why not me?"

♪ Gentle music (Tony) One of my goals for this is a teaching and learning experience.

I always joke that this is the Figueroa Botanical Gardens to my friends and recorded over 35 species of moths and butterflies in my yard throughout the years.

I have over 200 species that are native to the region, growing either as annuals or perennials.

And there's always a show going on.

Some of my favorite plants, Perry's penstemon, that is our native penstemon to this region of Arizona, attracts butterflies and hummingbirds.

Desert marigolds are one of my favorite flowers.

Just got this bright yellow flower on it.

♪ Gentle music Chuparosas.

I've seen it shoulder high out in the deserts of Yuma, so if it can survive in the Yuma Desert, it can survive in your backyard.

Brittlebush is a great desert shrub.

You'll see it just covering hillsides and just giant yellow flowers.

♪ Gentle music (Tony) I've created water harvesting features digging basins in the backyard so that I'm not losing my soil anymore.

♪ Gentle music Slowly but surely I'm starting to infect people in the neighborhood with that passion for growing native plants.

Like a little bit really goes a long ways and you just got to start somewhere.

Just digging a hole is often enough and putting some rocks around it.

(Tony) I work at Tucson Audubon which is a birding organization and that is a common question that I get is, "Why are you doing the work that you're doing?"

"I thought you're supposed to just be looking at birds."

And it's painting that picture of birds rely on our native plants.

They rely on the insects that are feeding on our native plants.

They rely on the seeds that our native plants produce.

This is reality.

Like these are the natural things of the earth.

Not our computer screens, not our iPhones.

If you have questions for Tony about what to plant in your yard, be sure to mark your calendar.

On April 19th we'll be hosting Arizona Illustrated Thriving in the Desert Sustainable Landscaping for Southern Arizona at the Environmental and Natural Resources Building at the University of Arizona campus from 1 to 2.30.

For more information and to reserve your spot, go to azpm.org/plants While there are many plants that are native to the Sonoran Desert, none are more iconic than the Saguaro.

And ones like the Saguaro behind me here are very rare.

That's called a crested Saguaro because the mutation on top resembles a crown.

And as you'll see, those can be very alluring to people who are drawn to them.

It's like the cactus just decided to take a different way of growing.

It's the most unusual saguaro I've ever seen.

It looks very regal, almost like a crown.

(Narrator) If you live in Tucson and you've been paying attention you might have noticed one of these.

It's a rare mutation of the saguaro cactus called a cristate, or crested saguaro.

This one is located right next to Old Main on the University of Arizona campus.

There's a strange one on the drive up to the top of A Mountain.

One at Tohono Chul Park, one by the entrance to The Desert Museum.

And a few more scattered around town.

If you look for them on Google or search hashtag crested saguaro on Instagram, you can see quite a few more.

Even in this age, when access to information seems infinite, the crested saguaro is still a mystery.

(Bill) In a crested saguaro, you have an icon on top of an icon.

You have this strange form of the saguaro which stands out so much in our minds, and you've added a whole other dimension to it in this strange growth.

(Narrator) The saguaro cactus on its own is an international icon.

(TV clip) The giant saguaro, monarch of the cactus family and trademark of the southwest.

(Narrator) Its form can be recognized across the world in photographs, illustrations and even emojis, but it only grows here, in a portion of the Sonoran desert.

Its area spans from western Sonora, Mexico to southern Arizona and barely spills over into parts of California.

(Bill) In many cultures, the greeting is to have an open hand and hold your hand up.

So subconsciously, I think it's buried in our psyches that this is something in our environment that we need to take note of.

(Narrator) Bill Peachey was born in Arizona and has been fascinated by the desert as long as he can remember.

(Bill) The climate, the rocks, the plants, the animals, it all fits together in one way or another, and it's like a giant detective story.

(Narrator) What we do know about crests is that they occur in most species of cactus, but none are as noticeable as the saguaro.

(Bill) They draw query like a magnet.

What is causing this?

How could this be?

Why is it this way?

The Marine Corps taught me how to hike, and I'm president of the Southern Arizona Hiking Club my second tour of duty there.

And I'm goal-oriented and I love these mountains.

While I was out hiking to the peaks, I was looking down through there and I saw these funny-looking saguaros.

I didn't know what they were for quite a while.

I read a newspaper article that said there's 214 of these crested saguaros in Arizona.

I said, "I've seen more than that."

So my new goal was to prove that fallacy incorrect.

(Pat) Eventually, that became our only mission, was to find the crested saguaros.

(Narrator) Cardell, Hammes, and a small group of people formed The Crested Saguaro Society and began photographing and geotagging all the crested saguaros they could find, trying to prove there were more than 214 in the world.

(Robert) And I was addicted.

Right away, I bought a camera, I started taking pictures.

Never slowed down.

(Bill) What's happening is the control mechanism for what causes the number of pleats is out of control.

So instead of occasionally branching, there are multiple branches on a crest, and it keeps branching until it can't branch anymore.

(Narrator) Russell True's family moved to Arizona when he was a young child to open White Stallion ranch.

(Russell) I just thought the desert was amazing.

I was out in it all the time.

(Narrator) This cactus has been there as long as he can remember.

There's a prickly pear growing out of the crest.

Guests look forward to coming out and seeing what they usually call the mutated saguaro, and we explain it's a cristate or crested.

You don't always see a cactus growing out of a different type of cactus, and they find that really interesting.

(Narrator) Recently, he found another crested saguaro forming on his property.

(Russell) The first question is why are they like that?

The experts don't know, so we don't know either.

So we give them a few of the theories, and that really doesn't satisfy anybody, but still they're just happy to see it.

(Narrator) Of those theories, the ones that are mentioned the most are freezing and lightning, but Bill Peachey thinks it's something else.

(Bill) I personally think that it's hormone control, because it turns on and off.

If you notice the cactus behind us, it went back to normal.

There are two normal growths off of it.

(Narrator) No matter what the cause is, members of The Crested Saguaro Society are still hunting for new ones.

I found three new ones this past weekend.

It makes you run to it to get pictures of it.

It's very exciting.

Made my day.

Sometimes I go out all day long just to find one, and that's okay, if it's a nice one.

(Pat) Originally, we thought the ratio was maybe four in a million.

Now I think it's at least ten in a million, maybe more.

I've proven that they're more common than they were thought to be, because people just didn't go out there and look for them.

(Robert) Now I've got over 2,000 of them.

2,214 crested saguaros.

(Narrator) Their data starts to paint a picture.

You can see the number of crested saguaros in each county in Arizona.

Still, little is known of crested saguaro populations in Mexico.

Though more common than previously thought, these cacti are also more susceptible to frost and strong wind than normal saguaros.

They're also threatened by poachers because of their uniqueness and value.

As a result, they are afforded the highest level of protection from the Arizona Department of Agriculture.

(Robert) Someday I hope science will diagnose what causes a saguaro to crestate.

Right now they just don't know.

This is one of those things that may never be figured out in our lifetime.

Because it's so difficult.

There are many things in life, and there always will be, that we haven't figured out.

(Delann) There's a whole lot in our whole universe, let alone Earth, that we don't know much about.

That doesn't make it any less interesting.

(Russell) I love that we don't know everything.

It reminds us of how little we really do know.

(Robert) They're a mystery of Mother Nature, and they're just beautiful.

I love them.

Real addiction.

And I'm not quitting either.

I'm over 80 now.

I'm not even slowing down.

I'm going to keep looking for more.

♪ MAJESTIC MUSIC Spadefoot Nursery is more than just a place to buy plants.

It's a community hub for Tucsonans interested in restoring the local ecology.

Their emphasis is on growing native plants that support wildlife.

[birds chirping] One of the things that dawned on me when we started the nursery is that we were giving people something they can actually do.

Because the problems out there are really big.

They're a lot bigger than us.

And one thing you have a large impact with is your own yard.

There are bees that don't have much bigger of an area their whole life than your yard.

[ DIRT SCRUNCHING ] [ METAL SQUEEKING ] (Katy) We focus on native plants.

Specifically the Southwest US and Northern Mexico.

There's a lot of really cool plants that you can grow from, say, Australia and Africa.

And really amazing, cool stuff.

But it doesn't do anything to support the wildlife here.

My dad sells plants at the Bisbee farmer's market.

We were just thinking, "He's got cool plants."

"He should be selling them in Tucson."

And then it kind of snowballed.

And we decided we needed a retail space.

(Petey) Katy's my youngest daughter.

And she says, "I want to come out and see you."

"And I want to, do you mind if I bring my boyfriend?"

And "Oh well, oh yeah!

We want to meet your boyfriend."

And, Jared walks in the door.

I mean, I'd known him back, we'd done some horticulture conferences.

He was a speaker.

I was a speaker.

They started talking about doing the nursery.

I said, "Well, you're welcome to have this name."

I said, "Listen, this is the best part of this nursery is the name and the slogan.

So take it and run."

I like that name "Spade foot" of this this little creature that hides and comes out in a monsoon.

You know?

If I were to start a new nursery, I think I'd go with "Box Turtle" or something like that.

You know, something like that.

I'd go "Box Turtle Nursery".

You know?

(Katy) We try and get out into nature as much as we can.

We're always excited to find new plants, and try and figure out how we can cultivate them if we can.

(Jared) Because our nursery is informed a lot more by ecology than it is agriculture.

Our local ecology has influenced what we sell.

This is a plant we grow.

The Erythrina flabelliformis, or the Coral Bean.

And you find it in Arizona grown out of rock crevices.

They're one of the last things that come out of dormancy.

It's a tough sell sometimes, if you don't know what it is because it's dormant until like June or May.

And the blooms come first, and you get these sprays of the long red tubular flowers, which is the big selling point for this plant.

[ DIRT SCRUNCHING ] We don't just expect these plants to sell themselves.

We let people know, like, "This plant is a larval host for this butterfly;" or, "This plant has seeds that the finches love to eat;" or, "This plan actually improves the soil."

What we really want people to do is to think of their backyards as a piece of a whole ecology.

[ NURSERY AMBIENCE ] (Buyer 1) I'm a design consultant, Landscape design.

I've been doing this for 30 years, but I've learned more here in one year than I've learned all the school that I've gone to.

(Buyer 2) Actually, I work at Roma Imports, and they come in to get lunch a lot, and so, I was like, "Wow, I should go check them out."

(Buyer 3) I ordered some globemallow, some penstemon, for a more pollinator-friendly space.

(Katy) It definitely feels like it could be non-profit work where there's a lot of education.

I feel like that's the way that word's going to get out, is you start with one person and then they educate someone else.

I mean, we have what we call repeat offenders.

Where people are buying plants at least once a week.

And we're starting to worry if we need to, like, cut them off, or like start a group to help people slow down.

But we're in the same boat.

You know, we stillwe own a nursery and we still go to plant sales and buy new plants.

(Jared) We grow a lot of stuff from seed.

A lot of the plants that we're growing are not in cultivation.

But I also prefer to grow from seed for the genetic diversity.

We really look at what we're doing as a form of restoration.

And genetic diversity is a huge part of trying to restore the flora.

A lot of nurseries, they want everything to be consistent, and everything looks the same.

And we're sort of the opposite of that.

We want that diversity.

[ NURSERY AMBIENCE ] Rather than having some weird colonialist idea of a yard, I really want people to stop being so human-centric and think about that there's all these other organisms that are responsible for our ability to be here.

The more people pay attention to their own backyard and it becomes a trend, the more impact we can have.

Because as these creatures are often migrating through our yards, they find that safe space.

They know how to find it.

We could learn a lot from them if we were just a little quieter and let them have some space.

Next, we'll show you the desert willow, a deciduous tree that's native to the Sonoran Desert, and the experts say it's a great choice for landscaping because it provides flowers for much of the year, and it doesn't bite back with thorns or needles.

(Adam) Welcome to the Tucson Botanical Gardens near Grant and Alvernon.

My name is Adam Farrell-Wortman and I'm the Horticulture Manager here.

This is the is the desert willow Chilopsis linaris.

The desert willow blooms all summer long when it's healthy and happy.

Because it's blooming all summer long it's going to have blooms and seed pods at the same time.

This tree is seeded through the wind and so when the seed pods dry out they've got a little sail attached to them that can catch the wind and have them flutter down.

They do also provide seed for our native birds.

[Birds calling] Once the flowers get pollinated, they'll drop, but still having a lot of the petal left.

And that's one of the Desert Tortoise's favorite foods.

And that's one reason why we chose this space for the habitat.

We built it right underneath one of its favorite foods.

In addition to attracting pollinators, it also provides seeds for a gravinus bird, birds that eat seed.

And then it's also attracting bugs.

And so there's plenty of birds that eat bugs.

And so it's going to be a place for those birds as well.

The desert willow is native to the Sonoran Desert.

Along wash areas and canyons, it can take long periods of drought.

But it needs more water than the average rainfall in the center of town.

It is a deciduous tree, so it will lose its leaves in the wintertime.

But because it blooms all summer long, that's one of the reasons why the desert willow is such a popular landscaping tree.

It's also one of our natives that was first adopted in the horticulture industry for cultivation.

Horticulture has been breeding desert willows now to have different hues in their color.

So they range in purples and pinks and things in between.

[Bird calling] The other nice part about this tree in the home landscape is that it's one of our few native trees that don't bite back.

So the desert willow doesn't have thorns or spines and doesn't have an irritating sap.

If you want this plant for your landscape, a native desert willow, if it's happy and in its ideal situation, it can hit up to 50 to 60 feet high, which is quite a large tree.

Generally speaking, in an urban landscape you will not see it get that big.

It grows rather quickly, a lot faster than most of our desert trees.

When you're redoing your landscape or if you're in a new property that you're developing, it is one of the trees you can start appreciating right away with with blooms and providing shade.

This tree is for a space that you want to cover a lot of ground, you want to create a lot of shade.

This is the tree for that.

[Bird calling] Thank you for joining us for Arizona Illustrated here at Tohono Chul Park and we hope to see you in person for thriving in the desert sustainable landscaping for southern Arizona on April 19th and for more information just check out this website.

I'm Tom McNamara we will see you again next week.