Ring Three — The Sticks

02029

Something young in you is underground, feeding.

The plant is Peniocereus greggii — the night-blooming cereus of the Sonoran Desert, called the Queen of the Night. For three hundred and sixty-four days a year it is a bundle of dead-looking gray sticks leaning inside a creosote bush. Botanists walk past it. Everyone does. Its camouflage is not looking hidden — it is looking finished.

Underground it keeps a root shaped like a turnip, commonly five to fifteen pounds, sometimes far heavier — one of the largest storage roots of any desert plant. Everything the sticks gather goes down into it: water, sugar, whole years of light. The root does not spend. It stores, and it waits.

From above, there is no way to tell a dead plant from a saving one. The desert is full of things that look finished and are actually preparing.

In Tucson, a botanical garden watches its cereus plants all June and announces the night the buds will open. People drop their plans and come. That story is next year’s.

What in you looks dead right now and is actually storing?

Knock once next September

This page will never ask you for anything.
No account. No list. It only gives.

— Ian ✦