Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey

This is the time of year when you see desert millipedes out and about on muggy overcast days. Sometimes even crossing the two lane blacktop roads near my home. When that occurs I invariably will see several millipedes crossing the road in the same area, causing me to wonder why we don’t have millipede crossing signs along the highway. At least seasonally like the “ice on bridge” of “watch for water” signs. And I think we could agree that a “Millipede Crossing” sign with the silhouette of a millipede would be an excellent sign. But yes, I know it’s not likely that a millipede crossing sign will ever happen. Honestly if I had my way there would be crossing signs for every wild creature found in the borderlands.

The poem was originally my contribution to  a poetic inventory of the Saguaro National Monument East done in 2012. The photos are mine.

I’m pretty sure I first encountered the plant called mala mujer in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson around 30 years ago. I had 10 years of commercial horticulture under my belt and I had become a native plant geek. “To heck with all these exotics,” I’d shout to people, “Grow native!” Yes, an obnoxious native plant geek. Anyway, I’m also pretty sure I turned that encounter into a Growing Native episode and I mispronounced the genus Cnidoscolus. “The C is silent,” a good friend botanist/horticulturist gently told me. Where would I be without friends like that?

There are close to 100 species of Cnidoscolus found in North America, South America and the West Indies. They range from perennials to shrubs to trees and they’re so fascinating that some folks collect them…Kids collect the whole set! And listen, many of the species used to be in the genus Jatropha, which is so very cool, because I saw Jatropha macrorhiza and Cnidoscolus growing side by in the Mule Mountains. Well, I thought it was cool.

 

If you were to look up Cnidoscolus angustidens on SEINet https://swbiodiversity.org/seinet/ you’d find some neat photos of the flowers with their interesting stamen and pistils. The photos here are mine and taken on the day described in this episode.

At my age I should being thinking more of getting rid of clutter rather than adding to it. I like to tell our daughters Katy and Sarah that some day they can have it all. I’m not sure they find that very funny anymore, but hey, if you’re going to inherit the home then I’m afraid the clutter comes with it. I just hope everyone remembers some of the stories that go with it all.

Arizona white oak is Quercus arizonica. I’ve come across some magnificent ones over the last 28 years of living near them and hiking among them. We do have some planted in our yard as well, grown from collected acorns. They too have stories. Oh, and that’s Ms. Mesquitey’s hand in that photo of the trunk of the huge white oak I’m jabbering about in this episode.

The other photos give you a little idea of the sort of clutter found on the book shelves in our home near the banks of the Ol’ Guajolote. (Hmm, someone needs to dust.) I’m a big fan of those sombrero ash trays and they can hold some cool stuff. Call me the “King of Klutter!”

San Miguelito (Antigonon leptopus) is quite the Mexican native plant. I read that it’s found in habitat not only in Sonora and Chihuahua and southward, but also Baja California. Unfortunately, where this tough Mexican vine has been introduced as an ornamental in more mesic areas like the southeastern US, it has become an invasive varmint. Sad, but true, so don’t go sending seed back to friends in Florida. They already have some.

And finally; this episode of Growing Native is a tribute to Tucson and the surrounding wild landscape. It’s where I first cut my teeth on native plants and animals and I’ve been on a marvelous journey ever since.

The photo of the flowering San Miguelito is not mine, but stolen from Spadefoot Nursery’s website, so a thank you to them.

This episode is a reminiscence…something I seem to be doing a lot of lately…and also a plea for getting our children and grandchildren out of doors, be it a back yard or out to the desert.

The photos are mine. The Boy’s Book of Frogs, Toads and Salamanders came out in 1957. I got it as a present when I was 9 or 10.  The duded up Sonoran Desert Toad was the logo of the country band The Dusty Chaps.

I hope we all get all of our monsoon fixes this season. One of those for me and maybe you too, will be toads calling from puddles.

The photo is mine and taken from our home of storms in the distance as the sun is setting.

I wrote this song about Lycium fremontii when I was managing the native plant nursery of Desert Survivors on West Starr Pass in Tucson. The nursery is located right beside the Santa Cruz River at the base of A Mountain (Sentinel Peak). I used to perform the song whenever I did slide show talks and a version of it ended up on The Best of Growing Native Volume III. This is yet another version. I love the chorus and have always envisioned the song being part of a musical about Tucson or the Sonoran Desert that surrounds it. I’m looking for investors…I’m kidding.

I have so many 35 mm slides of this shrub and its flowers and fruit, but no digital photos, so the photo used here is by Tom Van Devender. He is a botanist, ecologist, biologist and a wonderful fellow. I thank him.

I’ve told the story of the yucca moths and the soaptree yuccas many times. I love to tell it when I give talks and I’m not making this up, many years ago on a special International Women’s Day on KXCI, my wife, yes, Ms. Mesquitey, told the yucca moth story on Growing Native. We both think it is one of the most beautiful and magical things that happen around us in the natural world. Yes, it’s part of an extremely long and always lengthening list of wonderful things, but what a great example of how we can’t possibly ever replace our native plants or pollinators…and why would we try. Go native!

The photos are mine and taken here at home of some Yucca elata flowers with a surprise; I was pulling back the flower petals to reveal the flower parts and lo and behold, there was Ms. Tageticula elatella! She’s on a stamen in both photos and was probably just hanging out and waiting for evening. If my hearing were better I probably could have heard her asking me to please lower the petals so she could get some sleep, as she had a long night ahead.

Every time I pull a reference book or field guide off the shelf to read about a recently seen insect I seem to run across a quote by the famous entomologist E. O. Wilson. I like this comment I ran across recently on insects, calling them “the little things that run the world.”

It’s easy to see why someone would want to become an entomologist. You could specialize in any one of a number of orders in the Class Insecta; Hymenoptera, Coleoptera, Orthoptera, Lipidoptera…how many orders of insects are there? It depends who you talk to, but there are around thirty orders. Whoa, you could spend several lifetimes studying insects and never be done! This Growing Native episode only mentions three species from three different orders. I’ve got some learning to do!

The photos are mine. The common buckeye butterfly is on an Apache plume shrub. The oak leaf grasshopper on the ground is among old oblong white oak leaves and the large leaves in the top right of the photo are sycamore. The fiery searcher ground beetle in my hand is with some of the old grass that came with the capture. It’s a beautiful beetle!

I pursued the Mexican stoneroller ( Campostoma ornatum) for a few minutes trying to get a photo or two before deciding to quit harassing the fish in that stream. The photos were poor, but confirmed a male stoneroller. I’m excited to have seen the fish, but I feel terrible about chasing a Mexican stoneroller in its breeding season.

Well, here are some things I’ve learned: The streams and pools of the Swisshelm, Chiricahua, Mule, Pedregosa, Perilla and Peloncillo mountains are part of the Rio Yaqui Drainage. Those water courses drain toward Sonora and the Rio Yaqui and have or had -some have been extirpated – the same eight species of fish that are found in that large Sonoran river. The Mexican stoneroller is one of those eight species and I owe that fish big time for helping cure the blues. Yay, for cool native fish in the borderlands!

The photos are mine of that riparian area and show the shallow stream that makes it very easy to spot interesting fish in the water.