The first time I saw and identified crimson sage (Salvia henryi) was years ago just outside Paradise in the Chiricahua Mountains. ..”just outside Paradise” is a wonderful line… anyway, Marian and I were checking out a native mulberry when we saw the bright red flowers of crimson sage on the same hillside. Later I learned later that John and Sara Lemmon collected it in the Chiricahua Mountains in 1882. The Lemmons sent their plant collections back east to Asa Gray for identification and naming. It was Gray who named the species henryi after the botanist Augustine Henry who collected and botanized…

It’s a little bit of a leap from talking about a plant in the aster family to talking about Senna in the pea family. It’s the way my mind was working at the time I guess. Senna species are found around the world. If you were to purchase the herb senna in a store or online it would probably be derived from Senna acutifolia, native to Sudan, Egypt and cultivated in parts of India. Our native sennas are also medicinal, though the strength may vary from species to species. Writing about slenderpod senna (or slimpod senna, but always Senna hirstua var.…

An episode written and recorded amidst the cluttered space that I call “books and bones.” Asclepias involucrata has a wide range in the southwestern US and into Mexico. I’m thinking It would be a fun addition to a wildflower pollinator garden, so ask about it at your favorite native plant nursery. Queen butterflies and their caterpillars certainly thought it was a nice addition to my hoop house. Maybe I should close the ends…nah. The photos are mine.

Arizona white oak is Quercus arizonica. I’ve come across some magnificent ones over the last 30 years of living near them. We planted a few in our yard as well, grown from collected acorns. Those oaks have stories too. The photos are mine of some of my clutter and that’s Ms. Mesquitey’s hand on the trunk of the huge white oak talked about in this episode.

The photo is mine and taken from our place looking west toward the Dragoons. I call the photo, “Come to Poppa.”

I first learned this snake as the western hog-nosed snake (Heterodon nasicus). It’s now called the Mexican hog-nosed snake (H. kennerlyi). And this is neat, well at least for me; a snake of my Kentucky youth was the eastern hog-nosed snake (Heterodon platirhinos). It has all the same crazy wonderful behavior as our borderlands species. Back in those olden days I remember folks called it puff adder or puffing adder, among other colloquial names based on its defensive behavior. Now you know. The photos are mine. Those are Marian’s hands doing what she has been doing for about 48 years…holding snakes…

Spotting Wyoming paintbrush (Castilleja linariifolia) with those bright red inflorescences out on that gravelly plain in a thicket of Apache plume was so cool.  Our “what’s going on quest” was a success. Paintbrush is what’s going on! The photos are mine. Do you see the beaks? Pretty cool.

The distinctive odor of canyon ragweed (Ambrosia ambrosioides) is so Sonoran Desert. Hey, burs in your flip flops is a very Sonoran Desert thing too and some of those burs could be from kissing cousin Ambrosia deltoidea. Oh, I forgot to mention that canyon ragweed has medicinal uses, so you may want to look up its uses. So Sonoran Desert! And the plant list that I was perusing and enjoying was for the Dunbar Springs Neighborhood in Tucson. The inclusion of canyon ragweed on the list made me want to move to that neighborhood. I like the drawing of canyon…

This episode of Growing Native is a rambling reminiscence about amphibians and reptiles. With the monsoon starting up here in the borderlands I think we’re going to be seeing some of those. Yay! The photos are mine. That’s a pile of wonderful field guides. I love the old 1966 Peterson Field by Robert Stebbins. The western duded up Sonoran Desert Toad was the logo of the 1970s Tucson band The Dusty Chaps. And the boy and girl catching tadpoles, well, that’s me and my friend Cricky (Lucretia) back in those wonderful days.

The common name Firecracker Bush is a good one for Bouvardia ternifolia with its clusters of glowing scarlet flowers that look like small floral explosions, but it can also be one of the many common names for the plant Russelia equisetiformis. Yikes! Sooo, how about the combination of the flower color and the botanical to give  us Scarlet Bouvardia. That’s a pretty cool common name! And, I forgot to say that Bouvardia ternifolia is in the Madder family Rubiaceae, but now I have. The photos are mine and taken while on a recent jaunt to the woodlands.