Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey

The art is by Cicely Mary Barker. Friend Kat Armstrong sent it my way. Bless her heart. I had forgotten that fairies gather acorns too.

The bigtooth maple is no longer in its own family of Aceraceae, but is in Sapindaceae. Molecular taxonomy keeps us plant geeks on our toes. Across the southwest Acer grandidentatum ranges from 4,000 to 7,000 ft. in elevation. I love the lower elevation maples you find in the canyons that wander down the mountains. Cave Creek Canyon in the Chiricahuas has bigtooth maples and I remember many years ago admiring them in Ramsey Canyon of the Huachuca Mountains. I’m guessing you have a favorite canyon or mountain side to find them as well. The great photo of the maple in…

There are three species of Acourtia found in Arizona. If you are a desert rat of sorts, say you walk around, poke around in the deserts of southeastern Arizona, well then I’m thinking you probably know the plant Acourtia nana or desert holly. The plant jabbered about in this episode is desert peony or Acourtia thurberi. It’s really a borderlands species found where I love to hang out in Madrean woodlands, so think mid elevations. The plants are quite attractive, so I gathered seed and I think I’ll grow some to plant around our place. Cool, right? Very. I should…

My made up morning melodies are not nearly as amazing as the songs of a curved bill thrasher, but they help me begin the day. If I start thinking about the groundwater pumping in the Sulphur Springs Valley of Cochise County, Arizona, well then I’ll want to sing the blues. Singing to the flora and fauna around our little homestead is much better. In the foothills and mountains around you and me, white flowering honeysuckle (Lonicera albiflora) can be found from 3,500 ft to 6,000 ft. I find it in woodland canyons and along streams. The plant in our yard,…

The specific epithet ligusticifolia for this Clematis means that the plant has leaves like Ligusticum or lovage. I used the name Levisticum for lovage and that’s correct, but for the cultivated garden variety of lovage. It was the English explorer botanist Thomas Nuttall that gave the specific epithet ligusticifolia to the plant and I suspect that he’s comparing the leaves to an American species of Ligusticum. I learned a whole lot more about this, but I’m going to save the rest of the story for another episode, because we do have a very cool native Ligusticum in the mountains of…

I meant to mention in this ramble that in old range plant books and even in some floras, it’s noted that this plant is quite poisonous to cattle or horses. Ironically if you were to look this plant up in your favorite medicinal plant book you’d find that this Senecio has many uses for humans. Now you know. And hey, the photos are mine.

I started my career in horticulture spring of 1980 when I got a job as a laborer at a wholesale nursery northwest of Tucson. The California landscape palette ruled back then, but a push had started to grow more regional native plants. Growers grew native mesquite, but also the South American species of Prosopis were quite popular. Most of the selections were thornless and fast growing, oh and they were all called the “Chilean Mesquite.” I got caught up in the frenzy, but soon realized they didn’t have half the character of the native velvet mesquite, that stout slower growing…

I can’t seem to get a handle on how many species of Heuchera are found North America, and there’s gotta be some in Northern Mexico, right? And, I read that there is a single species in Far Eastern Russia. Whaaa? Well there are 40 to 50 species in American and a bunch of cultivars…a whole bunch! Many of those are grown purely as foliage plants. Who needs pretty flowers when you got those basal leaves? Well, I do and here in the borderlands look for Heuchera sanguinea in shady rocky moist areas…cliffs, rocky little seeps, nooks and crannies from 3,500’…

The genus Allium has had quite a taxonomic journey and is at this time (stay tuned!) in the amaryllis family, Amaryllidaceae, where it had once been, so welcome back Allium. There are over 400 species of Allium native to the Northern Hemisphere. Arizona has 13 of those and nodding onion, Allium cernuum is one of those. Yay! Oh, I know, I know, it’s unlikely that an onion will usurp the rose as the national plant of the United States. Allow me to dream. The photos are mine.

How fortuitous to come across Gregg’s mistflower out in the desert scrub during the Fall Festival of Blooming Asteraceae! What a beautiful plant. Oh, and by the way, this mist flower’s botanical name used to be Eupatorium greggii. 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 ran out of time. The photos are mine.