Pronounciation: Pa-key-SEER-e-us prin-GLEE-eye

Hardiness zones
Sunset 12-24
USDA 9-11

Landscape Use: Strong accent to focal point, large desert gardens, desert landscapes, water conservation gardens.

Form & Character: High impact, stiffly upright and branched, imposing, dominant, visually demanding.

Growth Habit: Evergreen, herbaceous to semi-woody, columnar succulent cactus, moderate growth rate to eventually 30- to 50-feet tall (considered to be the tallest cactus in the world), highly branched with age, long lived.

Foliage/Texture: Succulent, dull, glaucous green stems with ribs and furrows, individual, distinct areoles located on ribs, up to 20 spines per areole, grayish whitish to 2-inches long, areoles of older stems or plants lack spines; coarse texture.

Flowers & Fruits: The Mexican giant cardon is trioecious with different individuals bearing flowers that are bisexual, staminate, and pistillate. Individual flowers are white with yellow centers 3-inches wide, located along stems ribs; fruits reddish, globular, spiny.

Seasonal Color: Flowers during spring.

Temperature Heat tolerant, but can be damaged by freezing temperatures.

Light: Full sun. Similar to saguaro, in desert locations young specimens will require the shade of a nurse plant to protect against sun injury.

Soil: Tolerant of most soil types, but does best in a light, well-drained soil.

Watering: None once established.

Pruning: None

Propagation: Seed, rarely stem cuttings.

Disease and Pests: Root rot if soils are chronically wet.

Additional comments: Despite its relative slow growth rate, Mexican giant cardon should be used only in large-scale desert landscapes. Larger specimens can be transplanted, however similar to saguaro care must be exercised to insure correct coordinate alignment of the plant when moved to a new site. Mexican giant cardon can have a symbiotic association with nitrogen fixing bacteria which facilitates its growth on sites with rocky or poor soil.

Taxonomic near look alikes: Mexican giant cardon resembles saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea), but it is more heavily branched with stem attachments starting nearer to the base of the trunk with fewer ribs on its stems, flowers located lower along its stems rather than at the stem apex, and it has spinier fruit. In Phoenix, Mexican giant cardon is lesser seen compared with its more famous saguaro cousin.

Biomedical factoid: Mexican cardon fruit extracts have been shown to have potential anti-cancer properties.