Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey

A spring wildflower in the primrose family Onagraceae, Oenothera primiveris is always a delightful surprise in our yard. And thank you Carl Linnaeus for the confusing generic name Oenothera. Jeez! I’ve come across quite a few interpretations of the meaning and I liked this sentence I found in my search; “It’s etymology is uncertain.” I’ll say! I did like the meaning I found in California Flora by Phillip Munz and David Keck and that was my source, but perhaps a seance and chat with Carl would resolve the uncertainty. The photos of the primrose are mine and taken around our…

I was wondering if I talk about dock (Rumex hymenosepalus) every spring, so I looked though my notes. Well, not every spring, but almost. If you’re interested in Rumex in an ethnobotanical sorta way, here is a good place to start your research: Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert by Wendy Hodgson. The photos are mine. I didn’t have a good pic of the red stalk shooting out of the large wavy green leaves, so I recommend the site SEINet for some great photos and more good plant info. Now you know.

When I sat down to put this episode together I thought it was going to be about the flatheaded wood borers I find when I’m splitting fire wood. Somewhere after talking about sauntering around our homestead I wandered off to another topic. Did I even mention wood borers? So gray fox skull it is. I’ll save flatheaded wood borers for another time. Stay tuned! Gray foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) have a large range in North America with much of it shared with the red fox (Vulpes vulpes). Red foxes don’t occur in Arizona…well, maybe up along the northern border…so gray foxes…

The photos are mine and taken in my office, Books and Bones.

Twenty-five or thirty years ago I learned the scientific name of this butterfly as Adelpha bredowii. Then the sister butterfly of the Arizona woodlands got listed as Adelpha bredowii ssp. eulalia. Now…ta da…the Arizona Sister is Adelpha eulalia. Yay!  And, eulalia does not mean “you go girl.” The specific epithet is from the Greek: eu means good and lalia means conversation, so…a good conversationalist or well spoken. Who knew? The photos are mine. They’re not great and I’m pretty sure I some have better ones, but suspect they are slides sitting in an old Carousel Projector tray (speaking of twenty-five…

The clearing of land, of biotic communities, feels like a southern Arizona affliction doesn’t it? ” We need a housing development, we need a mine, we need a wall and the desert is in the way.” Jeez… Arizona walnut (Juglans major) is the only native 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 little walnut (J. microcarpa) being found in Arizona. That would be cool, but I dunno. I’ll keep you posted. Oh, and of course Juglans major and J. microcarpa…

After I produced this episode, Marian (Ms. Mesquitey) and I were driving in the desert outside Bisbee, AZ marveling at the silhouettes of viscid acacia (Vachellia vernicosa) and I realized I had written and jabbered about winter silhouettes of many deciduous trees and shrubs several times in the past… ahem, like every winter for over 30 years. Oh well, the outlines of naked branches against a borderland sky are glorious. The photos are mine of desert willows (Chilopsis linearis) very near our home.

I love desert honeysuckle (Anisacanthus thurberi). It’s a favorite plant and I think that’s because of seeing it growing and flowering in that arroyo along the road to Gates Pass way back in the olden days. My gosh doesn’t a drive to the Sonoran Desert through Gates Pass sound like fun. I haven’t done that in many years. Please don’t tell me there are strip malls all the way there. That would call for a lot more flora and fauna medication. Maybe that’s a good thing…the meds, not the malls. The photos are mine and taken at our home where…

The photos are mine and taken at our home.

I mention that the US Soil Conservation Service introduced and used Pentzia incana for erosion control back in the 1930s. And, I remembered that in 1980 at my first nursery gig, karoo bush was in the horticulture trade. Back then I thought that it was a pretty plant. Well, it is a pretty plant, but hello, if it spreads from seed into native habitat then that’s not good. Go native, Mister Mesquitey! Okay, okay, I will, er, I did. The photos are mine and taken the day described. I snapped them quickly to remind me to look up Pentzia when…