Talking about desert broom (Baccharis sarothroides) is a November tradition and so is singing an old hymn that I like to play with. The melody of the song has had quite a journey from a Dutch folk song of the early 1600s to the early 1800s when Eduard Kremser wrote the hymn using the melody. The Kremser starts with the line “We gather together.” I love the line in the song, “the wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.” I hope it’s a great season of friends and family for all of us. Celebrations full of laughter, maybe tears, but all…

I loved sitting in that grassland and warming up with a rising sun. Is there anything better than sitting quietly and watching the natural world around you? I’m pretty sure this can be done in a back yard or a park or maybe a little farther out in the desert or nearby hills. And hey, you don’t need to be hunting and gathering. With frozen fingers I was able to take the photo of wooly bunchgrass (Elionurus barbiculmis) on the morning described in this episode.

It was the American botanist Soreno Watson, who was on the receiving end of the Lemmon’s collections, that named the onion collected in the Huachuca Mountains to honor Sara Plummer Lemmon. He made no mistake who it honored by using her maiden name and thus the botanical Allium plummerae. Common names are Tanner’s Canyon onion, Plummer’s onion or around our place we call it Sara’s onion. I thought I had some photos of Sara’s onion taken at Onion Saddle in the Chiricahuas, but couldn’t find them. Why do I think they’re 35 mm slides? Well, instead I offer the cover…

The art is by Cicely Mary Barker. Friend Kat Armstrong sent it my way. Bless her heart. I had forgotten that fairies gather acorns too.

The bigtooth maple is no longer in its own family of Aceraceae, but is in Sapindaceae. Molecular taxonomy keeps us plant geeks on our toes. Across the southwest Acer grandidentatum ranges from 4,000 to 7,000 ft. in elevation. I love the lower elevation maples you find in the canyons that wander down the mountains. Cave Creek Canyon in the Chiricahuas has bigtooth maples and I remember many years ago admiring them in Ramsey Canyon of the Huachuca Mountains. I’m guessing you have a favorite canyon or mountain side to find them as well. The great photo of the maple in…

There are three species of Acourtia found in Arizona. If you are a desert rat of sorts, say you walk around, poke around in the deserts of southeastern Arizona, well then I’m thinking you probably know the plant Acourtia nana or desert holly. The plant jabbered about in this episode is desert peony or Acourtia thurberi. It’s really a borderlands species found where I love to hang out in Madrean woodlands, so think mid elevations. The plants are quite attractive, so I gathered seed and I think I’ll grow some to plant around our place. Cool, right? Very. I should…

My made up morning melodies are not nearly as amazing as the songs of a curved bill thrasher, but they help me begin the day. If I start thinking about the groundwater pumping in the Sulphur Springs Valley of Cochise County, Arizona, well then I’ll want to sing the blues. Singing to the flora and fauna around our little homestead is much better. 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 in woodland canyons and along streams. The plant in our yard,…

The specific epithet ligusticifolia for this Clematis means that the plant has leaves like Ligusticum or lovage. I used the name Levisticum for lovage and that’s correct, but for the cultivated garden variety of lovage. It was the English explorer botanist Thomas Nuttall that gave the specific epithet ligusticifolia to the plant and I suspect that he’s comparing the leaves to an American species of Ligusticum. I learned a whole lot more about this, but I’m going to save the rest of the story for another episode, because we do have a very cool native Ligusticum in the mountains of…

I meant to mention in this ramble that in old range plant books and even in some floras, it’s noted that this plant is quite poisonous to cattle or horses. Ironically if you were to look this plant up in your favorite medicinal plant book you’d find that this Senecio has many uses for humans. Now you know. And hey, the photos are mine.

I started my career in horticulture spring of 1980 when I got a job as a laborer at a wholesale nursery northwest of Tucson. The California landscape palette ruled back then, but a push had started to grow more regional native plants. Growers grew native mesquite, but also the South American species of Prosopis were quite popular. Most of the selections were thornless and fast growing, oh and they were all called the “Chilean Mesquite.” I got caught up in the frenzy, but soon realized they didn’t have half the character of the native velvet mesquite, that stout slower growing…