Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey

I arrived in Tucson, Arizona in the fall of 1967 to attend the U of A. Up to that point I had been born and raised in Kentucky, but gone to summer camp and boarding school in New England. I was pretty much an eastern kid through and through. Was I in culture shock in Tucson? Yes! But I started hanging out in the desert and fell in love. So much so, that when I went home to Kentucky on school breaks I couldn’t wait to turn around and head back to Tucson. Finally, I quit going back home. I had found a new one.

If you want to learn desert plants, there is no better primer than the desert itself and there are tons of resources from handy desert field guides and floras, to the Arizona Native Plant Society, the Tucson Botanical Gardens, Arizona Sonora Desert Museum and fabulous web sites of local native plant nurseries. (Yes, I have a favorite and I think you can guess.)

Once you’ve learned a plant, reptile, bird, mammal or insect, well that will lead to another plant, reptile, bird, mammal or insect. Look out, you’ve fallen in love with the desert!

The photos are mine and taken a few years ago when I was going to give a talk at the annual Desert Hort Conference in Tucson. I remember that I went out into the desert west of Tucson to take a few photos and ended up spending the day running from plant to plant and shouting joyously to no one, but the plants.

And last but no least, Happy Birthday to my wife Marian who has shared so many desert adventures! I suspect there will be many more.

I suppose what I’m getting at in this episode is that monarch butterflies sure get a lot of publicity because milkweeds are host plants for them (their larvae eat them!) and fuel their long migrations, but please don’t forget that when you plant milkweeds you’re also supplying a whole mess of other insects a place to visit for nectar or pollen or parts to chew on too. Yay!

Ascelepias asperula is a beautiful southwest native milkweed. The specific epithet asperula means rough, but I couldn’t figure out what was rough, so out of curiosity I looked at the genus Asperula and the flowers on some woodruffs (Asperula spp.) are in clusters at the top of stems, not unlike this milkweed’s flowers (see photos). Well, it’s total speculation on my part. I sure couldn’t see what was rough, but then I couldn’t visualize antelope horns either!

The photos are mine of Asclepias asperula. Look at those carpenter bees! The milkweed discussed in Robert Behrstock’s research article in the Journal of Pollination Ecology is Asclepias angustifolia. Both species can be found wild in the borderlands or at your favorite native plant nursery. Go Native!

I think buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) is pretty cool, but I would never recommend it for a landscape in southern Arizona unless there is an agricultural well, an irrigation leak or maybe a babbling brook involved. In the back recesses of my gray matter I remember button bush north of Tucson in Sabino Canyon of the Santa Catalina Mountains. Buttonbush needs water, so maybe it’s best to enjoy it in wild water ways.

Not so with desert hackberry or the hop bush. They both are wonderful tough native shrubs. Desert hackberry is no longer Celtis pallida, but is C. ehrenbrgianae. Apologies and regardless of its botanical name it is a wonderful large shrub for birds with its dense spiny branches and juicy little fruit.

And if you want a “green dodo” for your desert landscape, (of course you do), then you want Dodonaea viscosa. I love the smell of the sticky narrow green leaves and the very cool looking winged samaras are a bonus on this rich green native shrub.

The photos are mine of hop bush and taken on the day we were out among them. No photos of desert hackberry or buttonbush included here, but you may want to find a photo of the buttonbush flower. It’s quite crazy and showy. Now you know.

Oh, and below is a link to another episode when I jabber about “the green dodo.”

https://kxci.org/podcast/the-green-dodo/

Born in 1930, Ken Felts knew he liked boys starting at age 12. But he didn’t come out as gay until he was 90 years old. Hear about his lost love of a lifetime, his reaction to his daughter coming out while he was still closeted, and how his life has changed since he shared his secret. (We ran into a little bit of trouble with Ken’s audio, but I promise this episode is still worth a listen!)

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There is only one species Mandevilla in Arizona, but there are over 100 species found (maybe as many as 200 spp.?) if you start going south into Mexico and Central and South America. It’s overwhelming. And there are numerous cultivars…be careful!

The old botanical name of this cool night bloomer was Macrosiphonia brachysiphon and translated to “large tube short tube,” which I thought was just a wonderful way to remember it, but that’s just me.

I wonder what critters visit this fragrant night bloomer? Bats? Hawk moths? Maybe early in the morning before the flowers close up, native bees? Well, it belongs in a night blooming pollinator garden at your casa, right? Mine too.

The photos are by the botanist Sue Carnahan and taken from SEINet. I thank her and here is a link to that marvelous site: https://swbiodiversity.org/seinet/

There is only one species of Marah in Arizona, but there seven species in North America and all in are found in the west and down into Baja.  Marah gilensis is not uncommon, but I hadn’t seen it in a while, so yahoo! Oh, a couple common names other than wild cucumber are big-root or manroot. The latter derived “from the swollen lobes and arm-like extensions of the unearthed tuber.” That name makes me and my son-in-law Jared giggle. We will always be third graders.

Oh, and I thought it was fascinating that the genus Marah is from the Hebrew for bitter. Marah, the town, shows up in Exodus. The traveling and very thirsty Israelites could not drink the bitter water from the well in Marah. When I looked up other species of the genus Marah I found that all parts of the plant had uses among the indigenous tribes of southern Canada to northwestern Mexico, from the bitter root to the fruit. Pretty cool.

I forgot to say that Marah is in the gourd family, Cucurbitaceae. It’s monoecious just like the squash or gourds you grow in your garden. So male flower and female flowers on the same plant. Think Ozzie and Harriet; same room, separate beds.

The photos are mine. And since I jabber a little about quail as well, a fun little book about our southwestern quail is Gambel’s Quail  by Lynn Hassler and published by Rio Nuevo Publishers. It’s not that old, but you may need to search used book stores. It’s worth it.

The genus is now Hesperocyparis, but back in the olden days I learned the rough bark Arizona cypress of southeastern Arizona as Cupressus arizonica ssp. arizonica and the Arizona cypress of central Arizona with its smooth bark was Cupressus arizonica ssp. glabra. The smooth bark Arizona cypress is the one you are most likely to find in the nursery trade and there are numerous named cultivars…25 to 30!  Anyway, the wild species range further than just parts Arizona, but it is definitely a southwestern native that makes for a great large tree in your yard or part of a terrific wind break.

The photos are mine. You can see the new seed cone almost ready to open and the old open ones show the very cool structure. I initially took the trunk photo trying to capture the oozing sap from bark beetle damage, but it also shows the rough bark that gives the tree one of its common names, rough bark Arizona cypress.

Here are some photos I took out along the ‘Ol Guajolote of the cones made in the sand by antlions, an antlion in my hand and Farley’s nose with some antlion doodles in the sand. If you would like to see an adult antlion just leave your porch light on this spring and summer and they will come.

Dorien never had much of a maternal instinct. She thought kids were a nuisance, and that the worry that comes with loving someone so much was too terrifying to take on. Just think of the potential heartbreak! As she got older, she realized that life involves powerful love and world-pausing heartbreak either way, and she started to rethink her ideas about kids.

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Dorien and Bart on their wedding day.

Dorien and Tobie, her faithful companion.

Tobie getting used to his new family member.

Jonathan, Dorien and baby Niamh.

Niamh Lotus

This is a rambling episode about beer cans in the wild, plant gestalt, and instincts about places. Oh, and an interesting plant called Sideroxylon lanuginosa, which I describe below. Here’s to a 2021 with less beer cans in the desert, more grinding holes in magical places and lots of wild flora and fauna.

When I first identified this tree I learned it as the genus Bumelia. That name is from the Greek for ash tree, but I could find no explanation for the name. Sideroxlon is the preferred genus name and now a days Bumelia is applied to a few of its common names, as in gum bumelia.  The “gum” part of the name refers to a gum or sap found on cracks or wounds in the trunk. I like the common name of gum bum, but only because I made it up.  Considering it’s range from Florida to Arizona you can imagine all the different common names it has and that’s only on this side of the International border, as this plant ranges southward into Mexico. Oh, and there are other species of Sideroxylon in the southeast US, so imagine all of the common names they have!

The tree is listed as deciduous, but I’d say “sorta deciduous,” because they don’t drop all their leaves in the winter, but then they don’t look all that great either. But hey, it’s wild and native!

The photos are mine of the branches, leaves and spines of Sideroxylon lanuginosum