Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey

Threadleaf groundsel (Senecio flaccidus var. flaccidus) is really an attractive shrub with its grey foliage and yellow flowers. The variety, S. flaccidus var. monoensis, is quite nice as well with its green foliage and yellow flowers. We’ve found that variety growing in the desert and low hills near Fort Bowie National Historic Site out in Cochise County. I meant to mention in this ramble that in old range plant books and even some floras, it’s noted that this plant is quite poisonous to cattle or horses. Well, this groundsel is found all over the range, so I gotta wonder if livestock…

Hummingbird trumpet (Epilobium canum) is one of my favorite late summer into fall wildflowers to see in the wild. And, in the wild is wonderful, but this wildflower can be found in nurseries too, so get one for your personal habitat to remind you of those wild plants you saw. Yay! The photos are mine and taken on a recent trip into a nearby woodland. I love the shot with the water running through a rocky bed. The plants were spread into the surrounding woods as well.Very cool.

Here are some clarifications…the scientific name for the long-nosed leopard is Gambelia wislizenii honoring the naturalist of the 1800s William Gambel and Friedrich Wislizenus, an army engineer and plant collector also of the 1800s. I’m surprised that there is no alluding to the leopard like spots on the body, or the long nose, or the very long round tail. It’s not like those two fellows don’t have a bunch of other flora and fauna named for them. Oh well. And, the term “post nuptial blush” refers to the orangish spots found on the female lizard in the spring when she is…

Well, alleluia, it’s feeling “fallish!” Okay, lemme see…the photos are mine of a box turtle track (see the plastron print?), a snake track with the ventral scutes, nicely landscaped kangaroo rat mounds and a Wright’s buckwheat (Eriogonum wrightii). Oh, and I forgot to tell you that the kangaroo rat I so love…well, they’re all lovable, but the large banner tailed kangaroo rat (Dipodomys spectabilis) is prevalent on the land around our place and they are fantastic! Sooo, we gotta talk more about them. Stay tuned.

Cliffrose has had quite a few botanical names. Remember when the botanical was Cowania mexicana var. stansburiana? Okay, I’m old. The current botanical name is, at least for the time being, Purshia stansburyana. Cliffrose is a beautiful and tough native shrub. And, it is so fragrant that usually you smell it before you see it. “What’s that sweet smell? Oh, look a flowering cliffrose!” The photos are mine and taken on the day described in this episode.

It’s true that every year I get excited about fall blooming plants in the Aster family (Asteraceae) and proclaim that there should be a festival to celebrate these wonderful fall bloomers. How fortuitous to come across clumps of Gregg’s mistflower (Conoclinum dissectum) on a fall day out in the desert scrub. What a marvelous plant! And by the way, its botanical name used to be Eupatorium greggii and that was fun because I could jabber about Mithradates VI Eupator, the king of Pontus in northern Anatolia, not to mention the botanist, explorer and plant collector Josiah Gregg. Luckily for you I…

Here is the full botanical name of spreading snake herb: Dyschoriste schiedeana var. decumbens. Someone (Asa Gray?) had fun putting the Greek words together to form the genus meaning difficult to separate, referring to “ the valves of the capsules which adhere tightly to each other.” The specific epithet honors the German physician and botanist Christian Julius Wilhelm Schiede of the early 1800s (Willy, to his friends) who emigrated to Mexico to study the flora and fauna. The variety name decumbens means…hello.. decumbent! That would be a good name for a recliner! “Nap like a botanist in the Decumbent!” The photos…

I’m pretty sure I first encountered the plant called mala mujer in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson over 30 years ago. And I’m also pretty sure that I turned that encounter into an episode of Growing Native and I mispronounced the genus Cnidoscolus. “The C is silent,” my botanist/horticulturist friend Gene Joeseph gently told me. Where would I be without friends like that, right? Well anyway, here is a newer episode of Growing Native from another encounter with mala mujer, but in the Mule Mountains of Cochise County, Arizona.                     …

In 1881 botanists John and Sara Lemmon were collecting and botanizing in an area called Rucker Valley in the Chiricahua Mountains. And, they were staying at a military camp called Camp Rucker. I mention this because the old Camp Rucker site is very close to where Ms. Mesquitey and I were hanging out. I was so excited …well, I still am… to identify the same buttercup that John and Sara collected over 140 years ago. And, maybe in the same woodland we were in the day of our buttercup discovery. Lemme see…There were wild buttercups in fields and yards when I…

The first time I saw and identified crimson sage (Salvia henryi) was years ago just outside Paradise in the Chiricahua Mountains. ..”just outside Paradise” is a wonderful line… anyway, Marian and I were checking out a native mulberry when we saw the bright red flowers of crimson sage on the same hillside. Later I learned later that John and Sara Lemmon collected it in the Chiricahua Mountains in 1882. The Lemmons sent their plant collections back east to Asa Gray for identification and naming. It was Gray who named the species henryi after the botanist Augustine Henry who collected and botanized…