Growing Native

I’ve told the story of the yucca moths and the soaptree yuccas many times. I love to tell it when I give talks and I’m not making this up; years ago on a special International Women’s Day at KXCI, my wife, yes, Ms. Mesquitey, told the yucca moth story on Growing Native. We both think it is one of the most amazing things that happen around us and part of an extremely long and always lengthening list of crazy wonderful happenings in the natural world. The photos are mine and taken here at home. I was pulling back the petals…

It was Linnaeus that created the name Mimosa from the Greek: mimos for mime and the suffix osa for resembling. And as to the plant jabbered about, it was Asa Gray that named the species grahamii to honor James Graham probably at William Emory’s suggestion…fellow soldier surveyors in the field. The photos are mine.

The streams and pools of the Swisshelm, Chiricahua, Mule, Pedregosa, Perilla and Peloncillo mountains are part of the Rio Yaqui Drainage. Those water courses drain toward Sonora and the Rio Yaqui and they have or used to have the same eight species of fish that are found in that river. The Mexican stoneroller is one of those eight species and I owe that fish big time for helping cure the blues. So yay, for cool native fish found in the borderlands of southeastern Arizona! The photos are mine.

I love desert ironwood trees….love peering under them to see the plants they’re nursing …love the purple and white flowers and seed pods that follow… never minded the spiny branches tugging at my clothing and sometimes drawing blood… and, love the desert litter beneath them. The desert ironwood is a beautiful tree…yeah, it is! The photos are mine

The first time I identified crimson sage (Salvia henryi) was years ago just outside Paradise in the Chiricahua Mountains. Marian and I were checking out a native mulberry when we saw the bright red flowers on the same hillside. That’s pretty cool, because I learned later that John and Sara Lemmon collected it in the Chiricahuas 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 in China. Jeez, talk about an argument for species names…