Arizona, Boyce Thompson Arboretum: Boojum or Cirio Tree

Boyce Thompson Arboretum (BTA) holds collections of desert plants from the United States, Mexico, Australia, Madagascar, India, China, Japan, Israel, South America, the Middle East, Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Arabian Peninsula—all told 4,025 taxa and 20,000 plants within 135 acres of gardens. Situated on 372 acres of scenic upland Sonoran Desert with nearly five miles of trails, BTA is Arizona’s oldest and largest botanical garden and one of Arizona’s top tourism sites.The Boojum tree or cirio (American Spanish: [?si?jo]) is a tree in the ocotillo family. It is nearly endemic to the Baja California Peninsula (both the northern and southern states), with only a small population in the Sierra Bacha of Sonora, Mexico. The plant's English name, Boojum, was given by Godfrey Sykes of the Desert Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona and is taken from Lewis Carroll's poem "The Hunting of the Snark". The trunk is up to 24 inches (61 centimeters) thick, off-white in color, with few or no major branches and with numerous thin, twiggy branches sticking out at right angles, all covered with small leaves 1.5–4 cm (0.59–1.57 in) long. They can grow to a height of 20 meters (almost 70 feet).

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