The day before Dan’s marathon, we stopped by the Desert Botanical Garden to walk around for a few hours and make sure his legs were extra tired before he had to run the 26.2 miles. Beyond the stunning array of cactus they offer, I was impressed by this: The at-times, at-times strange layman’s names for the plants.

In no particular order, here are my favorites:

Organ pipe
Desert spoon
Chuparosa
Palo verde
Fish hook barrel
Compass barrel

And not to be forgotten, the best of them all, for reasons that should be obvious:
Old Man Cactus, who poses for his own photo.

The illustrious, sagacious Old Man Cactus (C) Sara Dyer