Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey

Seems every few years I revisit this old poem/song of mine. It’s a true story. Oh, and the band I was in back in those Tucson days was The Dusty Chaps. The photos are mine of some of the desert that blew my mind back then and still does.

It is the ground dried fruit of Rhus coriaria that’s used in cooking throughout the Middle East. The fruit of our southwestern species of sumac is almost always used as a refreshing tart drink and you come across local names like Apache kool-aid, sumac-aid or Rhusade. And, it has been used that way by indigenous folks for centuries. Reem Kassis is the author/chef I was reading about in The New Yorker. She is the author of the cookbooks The Palestinian Table, The Arabesque Table and the children’s book We are Palestinian, A Celebration of Culture and Tradition. The photos are…

Penstemons are in the Figwort Family, Scrophulariaceae. There are about 250 species and the majority of them, 99.9999%…okay I dunno, but there is only one other species somewhere in Eastern Asia… are found in North America and most of those are in the western United States. Lucky us and yay! Oh, and here is a fun factoid: It was botanist David Mitchell in colonial Virginia who suggested the name Penstemon to a plant he was working with, but he didn’t explain the name. Other botanists thought Mitchell was referring to the five stamen of the flowers using the Greek pente…

We love finding grinding holes in rocks when out traipsing in the wild. One of our favorite destinations when we lived in Tucson was the Coyote Mountains west of town. There was spot in one of the canyons where we found grinding holes and it became a family and friends gathering place. “Let’s meet at grinding hole rock.” You can find grinding holes in rocks all over southern Arizona and they are such a wonderful reminder of the people that lived here centuries before you and me. I love to stand by them taking in the view and imagining the…

Quercus toumeyi Arizona Sonora border foothills oak The photos are mine.

I was mistaken about Arivaca’s vulture celebration. It is not early March, but later in the month. Apologies to them, but hey, the good news is that you can celebrate turkey vultures all of March. Yay! We’ll have some small flora and fauna spring celebrations at our home. Your home too? Hey, check your very local listings for flora and fauna spring celebrations! Cool posters below for both Bisbee and Arivaca celebrations.

I have so many memories of hikes or journeys in southern Arizona that include walnut trees…sometimes up high in the mountains or as I mentioned in this episode, a riparian canyon cutting into the Sonoran Desert. They’re part of the flora and fauna that make the borderlands so diverse, beautiful and occupied, not vacant. The photos are mine and taken at our home.  

The etymology of the word mistletoe is all over the place and has been traced to Old English, Middle English, Anglo Saxon and old German…a mix of all of the above. I do like the meaning “dung on a twig.” And listen, mistletoe is really an excellent plant for birds, so why don’t native plant nurseries offer Phoradedron californicum for your ironwood or mesquite or catclaw? Ask your favorite nursery person for dung on a twig! The photos are mine. Look at those berries!  

When I used to give talks I would always show photos and talk about our regional yucca species; Yucca elata, Y. baccata and Yucca madrensis… Yucca madrensis, by the way is the former Yucca schottii, but here’s what’s cool about this resident of the Madrean Evergreen Woodlands; it’s pollinated by a different moth species than Y. baccata or Y. elata. They each have their own yucca moth species doing the pollinating. Cool? Very! Well there’s some more to know about this yucca, soo, you could pull a book or two off the shelf or you can grill your favorite nursery person with…

I read in HORTUS THIRD that there are about 150 species of Vaccinium found in “cool temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere,” 40 of which are found in North America. In this episode I rattle off some of the common names I came across, but think of all the hundreds of names indigenous peoples must have given to these shrubs. Pretty cool. I love the common name whortleberry and there are other Vaccinium species called whortleberry. Lingonberry is red whortleberry or bilberry is bog whortleberry and the list goes on. It’s all wonderfully confusing. If my hunt and gather for…