Growing Native

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…

I can’t seem to get a handle on how many species of Heuchera are found North America, and there’s gotta be some in Northern Mexico, right? And, I read that there is a single species in Far Eastern Russia. Whaaa? Well there are 40 to 50 species in American and a bunch of cultivars…a whole bunch! Many of those are grown purely as foliage plants. Who needs pretty flowers when you got those basal leaves? Well, I do and here in the borderlands look for Heuchera sanguinea in shady rocky moist areas…cliffs, rocky little seeps, nooks and crannies from 3,500’…

The genus Allium has had quite a taxonomic journey and is at this time (stay tuned!) in the amaryllis family, Amaryllidaceae, where it had once been, so welcome back Allium. There are over 400 species of Allium native to the Northern Hemisphere. Arizona has 13 of those and nodding onion, Allium cernuum is one of those. Yay! Oh, I know, I know, it’s unlikely that an onion will usurp the rose as the national plant of the United States. Allow me to dream. The photos are mine.

How fortuitous to come across Gregg’s mistflower out in the desert scrub during the Fall Festival of Blooming Asteraceae! What a beautiful plant. Oh, and by the way, this mist flower’s botanical name used to be Eupatorium greggii. That was fun, because I could jabber about Mithradates VI Eupator, the king of Pontus in northern Anatolia, not to mention the botanist, explorer and plant collector Josiah Gregg. Luckily for you I ran out of time. The photos are mine.  

I had a chance to use the word didymus when describing the seed pods of Menodora, but forgot, so here: the common name twinberry for Menodora scabra refers to the didymus seed capules, side by side small globes…twins. The short trail that I walked is actually a city park. If you walked nonstop from end to end it would take maybe ten minutes. Several years ago I walked that little city park trail with some friends and fellow flora/fauna geeks. I think it took us over two hours while we identified and jabbered about the plants and pollinators we saw.…

Squash bees are out so early in the morning that they’re moving pollen around well before honey bees even arrive. Research done by the Department of Agriculture found that squash bees “are largely responsible for the production of cultivated squash across North America” and “much of the Americas.” That is very cool. I like buffalo gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima) and I haven’t talked about it in many years. If you were to look it up you’d find that there has been a lot of research on seed of the gourd, but also of the large tuberous root. And, this is cool;…

Arizona white oak is Quercus arizonica. I’ve come across some magnificent ones over the years of living near them in southeastern Arizona. We also have some home grown white oaks planted around our home and they have some stories too. The photos are mine. I figured you like to see a little bit of my clutter, so there you go. That’s Ms. Mesquitey’s hand on the bark of the huge white oak and some leaves and developing acorns on an Arizona white oak.

A sentimental episode written and recorded amidst the cluttered space that I call books and bones. Thank goodness for a milkweed plant to help me snap out of it! Asclepias involucrata has a wide range in the southwestern US and into Mexico. I don’t remember ever seeing it offered in a nursery , but then I don’t remember a lot of stuff. But hey, it is a perennial with a woody tap root, so I’m thinking It would be a fun addition to a wildflower pollinator garden. Queen butterflies and their following caterpillars certainly thought it was a nice addition…

The photos are mine. Fruit tree in woodland and blue palo verde in grassland.

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, 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 and our dog Badger’s nose.

I’m pretty sure I first encountered the plant called mala mujer in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson around 30 years ago. I had 10 years of commercial horticulture under my belt and I had become a native plant geek. “To heck with all these exotics,” I’d shout to people, “Grow native!” Yes, an obnoxious native plant geek. Anyway, I’m also pretty sure I turned that encounter into a Growing Native episode and I mispronounced the genus Cnidoscolus. “The C is silent,” my botanist/horticulturist friend Gene Joeseph gently told me. Where would I be without friends like that? There…

Hmmm, a rambling reminiscence about amphibians and reptiles and of course to be continued, ‘cause here comes monsoon! The Sonoran Desert Toad, formerly the Colorado River Toad, is Incillius alvarius….formerly Bufo alvarius. As near as anyone can figure Incillius means ditch or trench and alvarius may refer to its large abdomen. A fun common name could be the Tubby Tummied Ditch Toad, but yeah, the Sonoran Desert Toad is an excellent name. And, a duded up Sonoran Desert Toad was the logo for the Tucson band The Dusty Chaps. The photos are mine.