Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey

The miller moths that showed up at our little homestead are the adult of the army cutworm (Euxoa auxiliaris) and they migrate from lower areas and head to upper elevations. I’ve read that they are common invaders of mountain cabins and summer homes, but the most interesting thing to me about miller moths is how they become part of the food chain in the upper elevations. In grizzly country the bears  (black bears too) chow down on the hundreds of thousands of moths that migrate and hide in the hills. Around us, I’m guessing black bears and smaller omnivores like skunks, ringtails or coatimundi find them tasty as well. Now you know.

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. One photo of looking out across the land and then some yucca flower photos 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.

I forgot to say that false solomon’s seal was formerly in the family Liliaceae, but is now in Asparagaceae. There are 2 subspecies of Maianthemum racemosum. The subspecies out here in the mountainous forests of the western U.S. is amplexicaule, so it reads like this: Maianthemum racemosum subsp. amplexicaule. Yay! And between the 2 subspecies this plant can be found all over North America…all over…and into a bit of northern Mexico. So where ever you are, look in the rich damp soil of a mountain forest under story.

And doesn’t “rich damp soil” sound glorious? It almost makes me want to create a forest garden with that kind of soil and shade here at our place. Nah, I think I’ll just enjoy seeing this beautiful native in habitat.

The photos are mine and taken on the day described in this episode. Do you see the maple leaves?

The genus Artemisia is in the sunflower family Asteraceae and there are over 200 species found around the world in the northern hemisphere. Well, there are a few oddballs that show up elsewhere, but mainly the northern hemisphere. In Arizona Artemisia dracunculus is one of the 14 species of Artemisia found in the wild.

Our native tarragon isn’t going to compete with the domesticated Old World cultivars in pungency, but I’m guessing one could start finding the more flavorful wild plants and come up with some nice selections…or not.

At our place I could be out on the land for along time looking for flavor among the kazillion plants. As the King of Tarragonia I’m thinking I will need some serfs…er, helpers to do the taste tests. Lemme know if that interests you. You’ll be working on the new flavorful borderlands tarragon called Little Dragon.

The photo is mine of new shoots coming from last year’s old stems. And thanks to my son in law Jared for reminding me that the plant really is tarragon. Really!

There are 30 species of Dalea found in Arizona, many of which are the the nursery trade because they are so doggone pretty. How cool is that? Very.

Dalea formosa can be found in many different plant communities around Arizona , New Mexico. West Texas and southward. It sure seems to like rocky rubble wherever it is and the gravelly plain at the base of the Dragoon Mountain, where I love to poke around, fits the bill.

The yellow banner on the beautiful pea-like flowers (papilionaceous!) does change to purple (joining the purple keel and wings) as it ages and it may well be a sign that says “sold out.”

The photos are mine and taken in the area described in this episode.

The riparian woodland Ms. Mesquitey and I were hiking in is at around 6,000 ft. in elevation. I think that may be the upper limits of the elf owls elevation range. Elf owls (Micrathene whitneyi) winter in southern Mexico then migrate in the spring to southern Arizona, southwest New Mexico and west Texas to an amazing bunch of biotic communities where they breed and summer over. Lucky us!

The photo is taken from Wikipedia. I thank the unknown photographer who took it in Madera Canyon of the Santa Rita Mountains and shared it. It is a beautiful photo of the elf owl perched by a hole in a sycamore tree. Thank you very much, unknown photographer.

I started my nursery/horticulture career in the spring of 1980 at Desert Trees Nursery northwest of Tucson. It was and still is a wholesale nursery that grows and sells to folks in the trade. The popular verbenas we grew then were South American cultivars with names like Peruvian Red or Trailing Bubblegum…short-lived ornamentals…ugh. We also grew a weedy verbena called Verbena tenuisecta and that’s still in the trade, but as Glandularia pulchella. Pretty plant, but again, a native to SA. I think it was Mountain States Nursery out of Phoenix that started growing and selling the native Goodding verbena back then AND that’s who Ms. Mesquitey and I were contract growing 5,000 verbenas for a dozen years later.

Goodding verbena (Glandularia gooddingii) is a beautiful native verbena with a sweet wild fragrance. Stick your nose in the flowers and you’ll catch yourself saying, “Oh my, the desert is beautiful.” Yeah, it is.

The photos are mine of the seedlings I came across by our barn…scruffy and small, but still with the floral fragrance to die for.

Tecoma stans angustata is in the Bignonia family Bignoniaceae and there are a bunch of species of Tecoma starting here in the borderlands with our species and then heading south into the Americas where there’s maybe a dozen more, not to mention many cultivars. All with flowers that range from yellow to orange or red or even colors in between. Pretty tempting, huh?

The genus Tecoma comes from the Nahuatl word tecomaxochitl…what a marvelous mouthful…and it’s a common name for a number of plants with tubular and usually yellow or golden flowers. Now you know.

I don’t know when or where the common name esperanaza came into being, but I love it. I’m guessing you knew that.

All my photos of esperanza are 35mm slides and I took a mess of them over the many pre-digital years. So the photo used here is from the website https://swbiodiversity.org/seinet/ and taken by the botanist Sue Carnahan. A big thank you to her. I promise to get some of my own photos soon…there are some beautiful tecomas in the Mule Mountains. Hmm, sounds like a quest to me.

Some personal history in poem and song. The photos are mine…well, I dug them out of the archives.                                            That’s the very beginning of the Dusty Chaps in 1969.  left to right Bill Lackey, Petey Mesquitey, Woody Janda, George Hawke.

Our one flowering wildflower on this wonderful day was the very pretty perennial called penny cress or candy tufts.  It is the former Thlaspi fendleri, but is now Nocceae fendleri. That’s my photo of the plant and it doesn’t do the plant justice. If you get a chance look it up at the marvelous web site SEINet.

Alligator bark juniper apparently is the old common name. Now a days it is simply alligator juniper. I’m now up to date, but after seeing all those male juniper plants getting ready to explode with pollen I’m thinking it could be called “pollengator juniper.” The botanical, by the way is still Juniperus deppeana and alleluia for that!

In central Texas and the land of Juniperus ashei folks suffer terribly from the pollen and call their suffering cedar fever. We’ve been in Santa Fe when the Juniperus monosperma are releasing their pollen making much of the populace there quite miserable. I don’t remember anyone having a name for their misery, but we heard lots of nasally profanities.

Oh, the dog barking in the background is Burley. I suspect you will hear more of and about him. The photos are mine and taken on the day of our walk through the woodland.

There are 2 species of walnuts here in the borderlands of southern Arizona; the Arizona walnut (Juglans major) that I talked about and a species called little walnut (Juglans microcarpa) which is uncommon, but I found it growing in a canyon on the east side of the Catalina Mountain above Redington along the San Pedro River. Travel eastward to the Trans Pecos of Texas and it’s quite common in that region.

In the eastern U.S. it is the land of the black walnut (Juglans nigra), not to mention other trees in the walnut family (Juglandaceae) like the butternut and a few hickory and pecan species (Carya).

I think when I first saw a walnut tree in southern Arizona in the 1960s, I had a “Whoa, that’s a walnut tree!” moment. Hmm, I still have that reaction and Arizona walnut trees (Juglans major) are magnificent! 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, in a riparian canyon cutting into the Sonoran Desert. They’re part of the flora and fauna that make the borderlands so diverse and beautiful and occupied, not vacant.

The photos are taken from SEINet and are either by Max Licher or Leslie Landrum…I mixed them up, but I thank them.