Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey

My morning ditties are not nearly as amazing as the song of a curved bill thrasher, but they help me begin the day. If I start thinking about the groundwater pumping in the the Sulphur Springs Valley of Cochise County, Arizona, I’ll want to sing dirges, so singing to the flora and fauna around our little homestead is a good thing.

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 along streams or very nearby. The plant in our yard, where I sometimes wander by singing, is a large shrub (6’ X 6”), but on occasion in the wild I’ve seen it as a vine and twining up into oaks. Make up your mind Lonicera albiflora!

The photos are mine. The flowers and the fruit are beautiful!

There are a dozen species of Melampodium and I wonder which one Linnaeus was looking at when he honored  Melampus with the genus name. And I wonder when the genus name started being misinterpreted to mean blackfoot and not honoring the mythological soothsayer.  The genus translated as blackfoot sure had (and has) a lot of folks scratching their heads about the meaning. “What or where is the blackfoot on this plant?”

But listen, the neat thing I learned about Melampus, besides him being a “legendary soothsayer” was that he was “reputed to understand the speech of all creatures.” My kind of guy. Er…god.

This was a fun discovery for me in the old paperback booklet of plant names.

If you are a total plant geek and interested in plants named from Greco-Roman mythology (not me, of course), the book Gods and Goddesses in the Garden by Peter Bernhardt is a fun read and though Melampus isn’t mentioned, there are plenty other mythological characters and botany through out. Yay!

The photos are mine. The little purple flower peeking through is the wonderful Allionia.

It’’s true that every year I jump and shout about the fall blooming plants in the Aster family (Asteraceae) and I proclaim that there should be a festival to celebrate these wonderful fall bloomers. It’s a tradition I guess …me getting excited about fall bloomers…I mean the plants, well they do their thing whether I get excited or not.

Anyway, how fun to come across clumps of Gregg’s mistflower out in the desert scrub. What a marvelous plant! 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. Lucky you the listener that I ran out of time.

Gregg’s mistflower (Conoclinum dissectum) is an amazing butterfly magnet and as I mentioned it’s grown commercially and is no doubt available at your favorite nursery. Very cool!

The photos are mine. I hope they inspire you get out into desert, the foothills or the sky islands this fall. What a season!

Fall gets me excited and fall color is a crazy combination of blooming plants and plants with leaves changing color as they prepare to go dormant. Crazy fall!

Mountain oxeye (Heliopsis parviflora) is a real borderlands species, found from 4,000 to 8,000 feet in the mountains along the Arizona, New Mexico, Texas border and southward into Mexico.

I learned that the red bordered satyr (Gyrocheilus patrobas) flies from mid August to November and can be found in the mountains of southeastern Arizona. I had a couple friends who also noticed large groups of them flying and puddling along creeks in the Chiricahua Mountains. I think it is so cool that the host plant for this beautiful butterfly is bull grass (Muhlenbergia emersleyi), a favorite bunch grass of mine that has tall purplish seed head plumes. Another good reason to head for this hills this fall; mountain oxeye and red bordered satyrs await you. Oh my!

The photos of mountain oxeye are mine. The red bordered satyr on Ageratina is courtesy of my friend Taylor Anne. Thank you Taylor.

The botanical name for jackass clover is Wislizenia refracta and for clammy weed it’s Polanisia dodecandra. I translate those very cool names in this episode. They are both in the Cleome family Cleomaceae having left the caper family, Capparaceae, due to DNA analysis. Well, fine! But listen many of the plants in Cleomaceae can be quite aromatic or foetid smelling.  Your choice and both jackass clover and clammy weed live up to that description.

I think I showed great restraint, by the way, in not shouting jackass several times during this episode. I only tell you this so you can see how I’ve matured over the years.  And hey, the photos are mine. The flowers of both species, the jackass clover above and clammy weed below, are beautiful!

At our little homestead we have more than enough canyon grape vines (Vitis arizonica) to share with the voracious caterpillars of the western grape skeletonizer. That said, I doubt I’ll get an invitation to be a spokesperson for the vintners of the Willcox wine region (the wine capitol of Arizona!) if I’m heard happily jabbering about western grape skeletonizers. But listen, I suspect the vineyards have Harrisina metallica pretty well figured out and I learned that there are organic ways to deal with these native rascals in a vineyard setting. Problem solved.

The photos are mine. The moth is on the flowers of white brush (Aloysia gratissima) blooming conveniently below some canyon grape in our yard. The munching caterpillars look like they’re wearing colorful striped sweaters.

This episode is a reminiscence sparked by some photos taken over 60 years ago. I’m pretty sure my father took the photos, because I can’t remember him ever being without a camera. So, thanks dad, I love these. I only wish you were around so I could tell you. The color photo is mine of our daughters Katy and Sarah in the Gila National Forest where we used to summer camp. Kids and nature.

And finally, thanks to Cricky for the friendship so many years ago and to Ms. Mesquitey for the friendship now and onward.

The photos are mine of the Mirabilis longiflora flowers and Manduca sexta, the Carolina sphinx moth and tobacco hornworm. Note the seven streamline white stripes and the red horn on the tobacco hornworm. The adult moth, has some pretty cool markings as well.

We don’t find many tomato hornworms (M. quinquemaculata) in our garden, the tobacco hornworm being the predominant glutton. Maybe the Carolina sphinx moth (M. sexta) hits the long flower four o’clock found around our home in between visits to Datura? OR more likely the 5 spotted hawkmoth leaves the research scientists in the nearby hills and hangs out at the Mesquitey homestead.

Thanks to friends Janine McCabe and JenJen Zen, who whether they know it or not…now they do…were part of this moth journey.

Turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) are wonderful and lots of folks agree. The little town of Bisbee in the Mule Mountains of Cochise County, Arizona celebrates the return of the turkey vultures with a festival and parade every March. If you have hankering to go to Ohio where turkey vultures are called buzzards, the town of Hinckley has been celebrating the return of buzzards in March since the mid-1950s. The common name buzzard, by the way, came across the ocean with early colonists who thought the huge birds resembled the hawks (buzzards) of their home country.

I can’t think of anything really wonderful to say about the invasive plant buffalo bur (Solanum rostratum)…well, it is interesting, like lots of plants in the genus Solanum… it is a North American native (Great Plains) …cool star shaped flowers that display heteranthery (homework!)…well, it’s here to stay, so may as well learn it.

The photos are mine. The little black dots in the tree are vultures.

I grew up in the land of the black walnut, Juglans nigra. And if you grew up in the eastern US, then you did too. It has a very large range in eastern North America.  And the eastern US forests have pecans, hickories and walnuts, all of which are trees in the walnut family, Juglandaceae!

Juglans major is the only species of walnut in Arizona. The species J. microcarpa is not that far way to the east in New Mexico and Texas and there are rumors of it being found in Arizona. More on that in future episodes!

Anyway, I love Arizona walnut! I’ve collected walnuts all over the borderlands and grown it for many years. It’s a fast grower when it’s young and grows to a magnificent long lived shade tree. Plant one for your kids or grand kids, or great grand kids or great great grand kids.

The photos are mine and taken at our home.