Bajada Press
Plate I. Carnegiea gigantea, saguaro, in flower with a lesser long-nosed bat at the bloom.
Plate I. Carnegiea gigantea, saguaro, in flower with a lesser long-nosed bat at the bloom. The saguaro plate framed and matted on a pale wall above a walnut credenza in a prewar apartment. Frame and decor not included. Botanical plate of saguaro cactus in bloom with a lesser long-nosed bat feeding, framed above a linen sofa in a living room. Room scene rendered; frame and decor not included.
Plate I Cactaceæ

Carnegiea gigantea

(Engelm.) Britton & Rose

Saguaro Cactus

Leptonycteris yerbabuenae

Lesser Long-nosed Bat

Size

AI-generated, composed and corrected against Sonoran field guides.

A tall composition with a lot of open paper around it — it reads calm above a console or a bed, and the single flower gives the eye somewhere to land.

Plate I of the Sonoran Desert series: Carnegiea gigantea (Engelm.) Britton & Rose — saguaro — in flower, with Leptonycteris yerbabuenae, the lesser long-nosed bat, at the bloom.

The flowers open after dark and are finished by the following midday.

Single-color line work on Hahnemühle German Etching, 310gsm, matte. Two sizes. Frame not included. Printed to order and shipped rolled in a tube. Free shipping in the United States. Bajada Press is based in Queen Creek, Arizona.

Field Notes

Saguaro Cactus

The flowers open after dark, sometime around eight in the evening, and they're finished by the following midday. A saguaro flower gets one night and part of one morning, and then it's done for good.

That schedule is built for bats. The lesser long-nosed bat winters in central Mexico and moves north each spring along what biologists call a nectar corridor — a chain of blooming columnar cacti and agaves that opens in sequence, so there's always something in flower ahead of the flight. The bats arrive in southern Arizona as the first saguaro flowers open and follow the bloom north. They hover, plunge face-first into the flower, and carry pollen forward with them.

The morning shift belongs to white-winged doves and native bees, which is why the flowers stay open a few hours past dawn. Between them, a saguaro gets covered.

The bat was listed as endangered in 1988 and removed from the list in 2018 — the first bat species anywhere to be delisted after recovery. Roost protection on both sides of the border did it.

A saguaro takes about ten years to reach an inch tall, fifty to seventy years to grow its first arm, and can live past a hundred and fifty. Nearly all of that time is spent as something you'd walk past without noticing.

Materials
PaperHahnemühle German Etching, 310gsm, matte
Sizes8x10 and 11x17 inches
InkPigment ink, single color
Shipping
ProductionPrinted to order, 7–14 days
PackingRolled in tissue, shipped in a tube
Returns30 days, unframed and undamaged
  • Printed to order
  • 8x10 and 11x17
  • Free shipping · 7–14 days
  • Queen Creek, Arizona