Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey

Chalybion californicum is the name of the metallic blue black wasp. Both male and female feed on nectar and they are easily spotted on blooming plants like thimblehead (Hymenothrix wislizeni). The female, however does all the nest building…well, she finds the old nests of Sceliphron cementarium, the narrow waist wasp and refurbishes them to her liking. So it’s Ms. Sceliphron that builds the original mud cells and Ms. Chalybion remodels and adds additions, not to mention stunned spiders for her offspring to eat. That’s pretty cool.

When I followed these wasps around the barn I realized that they were also searching for spiders and there are plenty. So the barn not only offers a place for the mud nests, but also a hunting ground. Oh, I should point out that these mud daubers are not aggressive so I’m not afraid of getting chased or stung. Maybe if I had four more appendages I would worry, but I’m also too big to stuff in a mud cell.

Both of these wasps are in the insect order Hymenoptera, which is one of the largest insect orders in the world. It includes bees, wasps, ants and saw flies. If you want to learn more about Hymenoptera I recommend the book Bees, Wasps and Ants by Eric Grissell. What a wonderful author. The book is so readable for novices like myself, and no you may not borrow my copy.

The photos of the mud nests are mine. For photos of the two species that I jabber about please check out Bug Guide on line.

I spent so much time jabbering about my conversion to a desert rat and monsoon believer that I left out some fun stuff.

Native bees that buzz pollinate flowers are Bombus species., Centris spp., and Anthophora spp. And yes, you really can hang out by the flowers and see and hear this happening! Oh, and look at how the petals of a senna flower create a cup; sonicated exploding pollen ricochets off the petals…there is no way a bee is leaving without pollen attached to it.

The featured senna is Senna wislizeni and the specific epithet is in honor of Friedrich Wislizen, a German born American physician, botanist, plant collector…yet another pesky immigrant! His name shows up in a few other species as well and what little I read about him it sounds like he was a wonderful and deserving fellow. So the senna can be called Wislizinus’ senna…quite a mouthful…or simply, woody senna, because it is.

Sennas are in the Fabaceae and there are eight native species found in Arizona. Woody senna is found in Cochise County and into Sonora from 4,000’ to 5,000’ on slopes and mesas.

The cloudless sulphur butterfly is Phoebis sennae. Phoebe is the goddess of the moon and sennae refers to the host plants. Cloudless sulphurs are common and beautiful.  Checkout the caterpillar in the photo below.

The photos of the flowers and caterpillar are mine and taken of some plants that I planted years ago along our drive. Every July and August they bloom and remind me of my monsoon belief system.

There is no getting around it, every summer monsoon when the borderlands come to life it is so exciting! Apodanthera undulata, the crazy melon,  can be easily seen along the roads and out across the land during this season. The clusters of yellow flowers give it away quickly. Those yellow flowers close up pretty quickly later in the morning. You can see the spent and tired flowers in the photo below. And check out the crazy ribbed fruit with the “disagreeable  odor” as noted in Arizona Flora. Hey, it’s melon loco in the Cucurbitaceae! Yay!

I’m so lucky to live in the land of the ornate box turtle (Terrepene ornata luteola). For me it has been a wonderful journey with turtles, from my Kentucky childhood to the borderlands of southeastern Arizona where I now reside. And by the way, box turtles can live 30 to 40 years, so some of the ones that eat at Fast Petey’s Box Turtle Buffet may still be around when I am long gone.

There are six species of Agastache in Arizona. Agastache breviflora can be found from 5,500 ft to 8,500 ft. in the sky islands of the borderlands. I love that it’s weedy in cultivation …a delightful weed to have. Oh, I have heard the genus Agastache pronounced a few different ways. I stand by my pronunciation, but pronounce it however you like.

Chuchu was wonderful dog and she ran our little homestead  for many years. There are 15 years worth of photos of her, but I’ve spared you with just a few. We miss her.

This is a rambling episode about the summer monsoon in the borderlands of southeastern Arizona. I know that I’ve rambled on like this for many years when it comes to summer monsoon and its affects on our desert plants and I think I could have kept jabbering for several more minutes about cool plants found in the rocky terrain of the Mule Mountains. Luckily for you I stopped, but wow, monsoon moisture is magical in the Mules!

 

The photos are Sue Carnahan’s and taken from the marvelous site SEINet. I thank her.

I don’t know any poultry fanciers that don’t have a guinea fowl story or two or three. Chickens are where it usually starts as they are the gateway drug. There are so many types of chickens that it is very easy to get excited and before you know it you have 30 chickens and everyone of them is a different breed. Then you may move on to turkeys or geese or ducks…I’m speaking from personal experience here…and then one day maybe you’re in a feed store and they have some young guineafowl called keets. And despite everything you’ve heard for years about guineafowl you purchase some. Oh dear.

There are 4 genera of guineas all found in sub-Saharan Africa. The guineafowl that we purchase in feed stores is Numida meleagris or the helmeted guinea fowl. Have you ever heard anyone call them helmeted guinea fowl? Me either. And if the scientific name looks familiar it is because turkeys are Meleagris gallopavo one of the most convoluted names ever, that translates to guineafowl peafowl, but I digress. Guinea fowl have minds of their own, if indeed they have minds at all. They roam, they lay eggs wherever and they are LOUD.

So now you know, but I doubt any of this will stop you from someday going into a feed store looking for some chicks, but leaving with a box of keets. Oh dear.

In July of 2002 I produced an episode about the summer monsoon and spadefoots. It was so much fun to write and record. In July of 2013 I re-recorded it and this is the newer version from that year. There had been so much chatter about spadefoots this monsoon, that I thought it would be fun to make the 2013 version available. I don’t know if it’s as good as the original…ain’t that always the way, but here you go.

The photos are mine of a tiny spadefoot hopping across the page of a favorite field guide. I did return it to its puddle afterwards.  Oh, and any mistakes with names or natural history in this episode are of course mine.

Phemeranthus aurantiacus, the former Talinum aurantiacum, is now in Talinaceae, the flameflower family, “a family of two genera and 28 species.” There’s more; the genus Phemeranthus is a combination of two Greek words and means the flower lives for one day. The specific epithet, aurantiacus refers to the color of the flowers which can be orange or yellow. Now you know.

I love the way you see those orange or yellow flowers out in the grassland in the heat of the day. For the photos used here I wandered out in the thick of a monsoon “pudding day” and snapped some shots. A sweaty endeavor, but it is such an interesting plant and flower. Flameflower is found from 2,400 feet to 6,600 feet out in the desert scrub or grassland of southern Arizona. For me it is always part of the muggy monsoon days of summer and magical the way it appears on the land that surrounds our place near the banks of the ol’ Guajolote.

I revealed most of my personal chicken history in this show. It is an ongoing saga, though I am much more in control of my crazy love for chickens. I finally recycled all my old hatchery catalogs. Okay that’s not quite true as I kept one Murray McMurray catalog…just for reference…really. Oh I love to look at the pictures – almost always paintings, by the way – of the different breeds in those catalogs. And no, I do not read them at night under the covers with a flashlight. That’s frowned upon. But oh my gosh, Australorps, Delawares, Wyandottes, Polish, Cornish and Buff Orpingtons! You know what I’m talking about!

The photos are mine. That large black chicken is an Australorp. They are so friendly! The hen above is a Golden Laced Wyandotte. She’s pretty but not so friendly, especially when she goes broody. Oh well, but listen, if you like chickens too and would like to add a book about the history of chickens to the shelf where you keep your “raising chickens the right way” books and your hatchery catalogs, I recommend Why Did the Chicken Cross the World by Andrew Lawler.

I read from the book  I’m in Charge of Celebrations, but I could have read from many others. If you live in Tucson or in the desert nearby then Byrd Baylor’s novel Yes is Better Than No is required reading. I’ve included a photo of our tattered copy from the late 1970s. It was republished in 1990 and illustrated by Leonard Chana, which makes it a wonderful copy to have as well.

I had a few chances to chat with Byrd over the years and every time was special. In the early 1990s I wrote a radio episode about Fremont wolfberry plants blooming on A Mountain near downtown Tucson. Byrd told me when she heard it she immediately drove to A Mountain to find them. I swooned.

Anyway, I guess that’s all. Byrd Baylor loved the desert and lived a long life. How lucky for us we had her. Below is a link to a nice piece by Tony Davis in the Tucson newspaper that may be of interest.

https://tucson.com/news/local/tucson-writer-byrd-baylor-voice-of-the-desert-and-its-people-dies-at-97/article_3f6683a0-d2c6-11eb-bdda-03e27dcace21.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share