Growing Native

It's pretty hard to go wrong no matter which way you head into the borderlands of southeastern Arizona. On the day that we turned west instead of east onto the blacktop near our home and headed towards the Dragoon Mountains the adventure began. The photos are mine of flowering Ceanothus greggii (desert buckbrush) and taken in the Dragoons where biotic communities clash.

Bristlehead (Carphochaete bigelovii) is a small shrub…a subshrub…that I'm not sure I would have recognized without the flowers and bristles. I wonder if I've wandered by this species many times before wondering what the heck it was. The flowers and bristles that helped my ID are contained in a very cool looking long involucre and I read that the throats of the flowers are “purplish” and the petals are white which may explain my fumbling over the color of the flowers...maybe. Anyway, a really nice native plant common in the borderlands and especially common if you recognize it. The photos are mine and taken on a windy spring day.

Just a couple things about this episode; the genus Linaria has been assigned to the European or Eurasian species of toadflax and Nuttallanthus is the genus for our North American toadflax…a whopping three species. Oh, and I suspect the common name toadflax is used for other plants as well, but why make things more confusing? Speaking of which, there are two species of toadflax in Arizona, but only one native. The other species is the exotic called butter and eggs or Linaria vulgaris. It sure is a pretty plant, looking like a bright yellow snapdragon, but no it's a varmint. I yanked some up in the Chiricahua National Monument a few years ago. I was sure some passing tourists were going to turn me in, so I skedaddled before I was caught with an exotic weed. Lemme see, is that more than a couple things? Well, one more; the botanical family Plantaginaceae makes me think of the royal dynasty Plantagenet… a good high school education is a terrible thing to waste. The photos are mine and taken at Toadflax Acres.

Our one flowering wildflower on this wonderful day was the pretty perennial called penny cress or candy tufts. It is the former Thlaspi fendleri, but is now Nocceae fendleri. That's my photo of the plant and it doesn't do the plant justice. If you get a chance, you should look it up at the web site SEINet. Alligator bark juniper apparently is an old common name. Now a days it is simply alligator juniper. I'm now up to date, but after seeing all those male juniper plants getting ready to explode with pollen I'm thinking it could be called “pollengator juniper.”  (check out my photo below...yikes!) The botanical name is still Juniperus deppeana and alleluia to that. In central Texas and the land of Juniperus ashei folks suffer terribly from the pollen and call their suffering cedar fever. We've been in Santa Fe when the Juniperus monosperma were releasing their pollen making much of the populace quite miserable. I don't remember anyone having a name for their misery, but we heard many nasally profanities during our stay.

Do I talk about dock every late winter and early spring? It sure seems like I do. Well, it's truly the first green plant one sees as winter ends and maybe that's why I get so excited about it. Green! There are 15 species of Rumex found in Arizona, some of which are introduced exotic species. Rumex hymenospepalus is found all over the state below 6,000 feet and it emerges in late winter and is blooming by early spring. Rumex is the Latin word for docks or sorrels. If you grow sorrel in your herb garden then you have a Rumex species and as near as I can figure the only difference between docks and sorrels is that sorrels are smaller. Hmm, that's not a botanical description. We love finding grinding holes in rocks when out traipsing in the wild. One of our favorite destinations when we lived in Tucson was the Coyote Mountains west of town. There was spot in one of the canyons where we found grinding holes and it became a family and friends gathering place. “Let's meet at grinding hole rock.” You can find grinding holes in rocks all over southern Arizona and they are such a wonderful reminder of the people that lived here centuries before you and me. I love to stand by them taking in the view and imagining the lives of people who were once there and no doubt taking in the view. The photos are mine of the wild dock and that's Ms Mesquitey with our dog Burley. I can't remember the grinding hole count in that boulder covered kitchen…17 or 18? The snake she exclaimed about was a blacktailed rattlesnake skedaddling as they like to do.

Yet another love affair with an Arizona native plant. It could change next week and I'll be in love with a new native plant, but listen, I got my first legitimate horticulture gig in the spring of 1980 (legitimate as in not pot, but landscape plants) at a wholesale nursery northwest of Tucson. At that wonderful nursery that gave a job to a “desperate for a job” fellow we grew the plant called desert spoon or Dasylirion wheeleri. Fast forward 40 or more years and I was working a few days a week for a large wholesale grower out in Cochise County, AZ where we grew thousands of desert spoons. I think it's one of the hardest working native plants in southwestern horticulture and landscapes. The genus name Dasylirion is a combination of two Greek words and translates to “a coarse, shaggy or rough (your choice!) lily.” In my excitement while jabbering I said “white” lily…but no just lily. Still a fairly good band name though; The Coarse Lilies. I think the common name desert spoon comes from the fact that the base of a sharp toothy leaf, where it attaches to the trunk, looks like a spoon when dry. Maybe if you're on drugs. I dunno, I may be making that up too. I mentioned Dasylirion leiophyllum in southwest NM and into west Texas, but neglected to give a shout out to Dasylirion texanum. And oh boy, the species of Dasylirion increase when you head south into Mexico. Yay! The photos are mine and taken in the Dos Cabezas Mountains.

In the early 1990s when this story and song came about I was poking around the West Branch starting at Ajo Road and north almost to Starr Pass where I worked at Desert Survivors Nursery. It actually starts near Irvington Road and it meanders through a lot of private property, so you just can't go wandering along it like a certain naive plant geek did back then. Yikes, I wish someone had told me! Anyway, I still love singing this song and thank you so much for listening. There are some cool flora and fauna found on the west branch, so it might be fun for you to do a search on line for the West Branch of the Santa Cruz…recommended.

Come on blue dicks and come on spring! Oh, while figuring out that the genus Dichelostemma translates as “a garland which is twice-parted to the middle,” I also discovered that the name was created by the German botanist Karl Sigismund Kunth. He did the botany of all the plants that the explorers Alexander Von Humbolt and Aimé Jacques Alexandre Bonpland brought back from their 1799 to1804 explorations of Central and South America. That’s 3,600 new species! I also learned that when naming species, Kunth paid “special attention to minute analysis of floral structures.” I'll say. The photos are from SEINet and taken by Max Licher. A big thank you to him.

Even as a child I was astounded by the silence of snow. I wonder if there is a name for silent snow? Around our little homestead it's called, “the snow that helps Petey sleep.” The plant that helped me sleep one recent winter night is Arizona rosewood. I first saw Arizona rosewoods growing among the oaks around Molino Basin in the Catalina Mountains near Tucson. That was around 1968 or '69. Yikes!!! Later in the 1980s when I was working at a wholesale nursery in Tucson we grew and offered rosewoods as an oleander substitute. It still is and here's the good news; there are are several species of rosewoods available in the horticulture trade. Hmm, I should say, species, subspecies and in the case of pauciflora, variety. Around us in the borderlands of southeastern Arizona we have 2 named rosewoods; Arizona rosewood and let's call the variety pauciflora Guadalupe Mountain rosewood. Go west to Texas or south into Mexico and you can start adding other rosewoods. Is that cool? Very. There are some nice rosewood descriptions, photographs and landscape uses in a couple of favorite books found on my book shelf; Cool Plants for Hot Gardens (revised) by Greg Starr and Native Plants for Southwestern Landscapes by Judy Mielke. Judy's book is still as useful as when it came out 30 years ago and I suspect Greg's book will be the same in 30 years, but no need to wait. The photos are mine and taken this winter at our little homestead.

I revealed most of my personal chicken history in this episode. It’s an ongoing saga, though I am much more in control of my crazy love for chickens. I finally recycled all my old hatchery catalogs. Okay that's not quite true, as I kept one Murray McMurray catalog…just for reference…really. I did love to look at the pictures of the different breeds in those catalogs. Almost always paintings, by the way, and no, I didn’t read them at night under the covers with a flashlight, but oh my gosh, Australorps, Delawares, Wyandottes, Polish, Cornish and Buff Orpingtons! You know what I'm talking about! If you like chickens too and would like to add a book about the history of chickens to the shelf where you keep your “raising chickens the right way” books and all of your hatchery catalogs, I recommend Why Did the Chicken Cross the World by Andrew Lawler. The photos are mine.

After I produced this episode we were driving in the desert outside Bisbee, AZ marveling the silhouettes of viscid acacia and I realized I had written and jabbered about the winter silhouettes of deciduous trees and shrubs several times in the past… like every winter for 30 years. Oh well, the outlines of naked branches against our huge borderlands sky are glorious. The photos are mine and taken of desert willows very near our home. Oh, my pronunciation of the genus Chilopsis got me thinking; botanical Latin is not the language of the Roman Empire, the Latin that I endured for 2 years in middle school. The Latin that’s used to name organisms has been used in science since the middle ages…I know, science was studied in the middle ages?… Latin was the common language shared, the linqua franca and the organisms' names were long rambling descriptions in Latin. Then a few hundred years later along comes Carl Linnaeus and the binomial system…2 names, a genus and a species for each organism. Thank you, Carl! A couple more things; folks tend to pronounce Latinized names in their own language or vernacular. I swear I can tell if someone attended catholic church by the way they pronounce Latinized scientific names…they sound like they're singing in Italian. And one last thing; there are a bunch of books about all of this. If you're crazy serious then there is William Stearn's Botanical Latin. Learn about reformed academic or traditional English pronunciations among other things and good luck to you! But for considerably more fun I recommend The Naming of the Shrew by John Wright. It’s really a fun read. Now, aren't you glad I mispronounced Chilopsis?

I remembered that one spring when we were up in Santa Fe visiting family and out on a hike it seemed there was a spotted towhee noisily foraging in every shrub. Noisily! Sometimes you will hear them rustling around before you see them and like all towhees they are busy rascals! The genus name Pipilo for towhees was created by Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot in 1816 when he described the eastern species. I've found his name associated with a bunch of bird species. He was an early birder…ha, ha. The 2 legged back hop scratch is little more difficult than some of my other dance moves like the twist or the jitterbug, but I'm getting it. I think I will shorten the name to “the towhee.” I'm already visioning folks circling me and shouting “Do the towheee, Petey. Do the towhee!” Oh, and the photo is by Laura Hughes. Thank you to her!

Desert anemone (Anemone tuberosa) is in the Buttercup Family. Buttercups are the genus Ranuculus and the family name is Ranunculaceae. It's probably just me, but that is a marvelous name to write and pronounce. Kearney and Peebles' Arizona Flora lists three species of Anemone , but the taxonomy has changed (a lot!) and there are now two species listed for Arizona. Desert anemone is one of the first wildflowers to bloom in the spring and to see it you'll need to head to a rocky slope or  canyon sometime in February and that's where you'll find it hiding among the rocks. It has a short bloom period, so don’t tarry! Oh, and on our hike in the hills above Fort Bowie National Monument we also saw pointleaf manzanita blooming, ’cause it’s an early bloomer too. Whoa, now you have two good reason to head for the hills! The featured photo is from the SEINet site and taken by Max Licher. Thank you, Max. The photo with the hand is mine…I tend to stick my hand in flower photos for some scale. By the way, look at those rocks. Limestone!

American robins, Turdus migratorius, are common summer residents in the pine forests of southeastern Arizona. In the winter they move lower to the mixed pine and oak woodland or sometimes much lower, ending up in nearby cities and towns foraging for fruit. Pyracantha plants are a common landscape plant throughout the region and they set an abundance of bright red fruit. Just like fruit on native plants in the wild the pyracantha fruit ferments and yes, birds can get quite inebriated. Party time! Come spring the wandering thrushes remove the lampshades from their heads and return to the pine forests and the sober life. Sorry, but time to build a nest and raise a family. It was in Pliny the Elder's encyclopedia Naturalis Historia that the name Turdus was given to the thrush. Several centuries later taxonomist Carl Linnaeus applied it to the genus. I sort of regret not having more fun with the robin's scientific name, but perhaps one does get wiser with age. The silhouettes are inside the cover of my old Peterson Guide. Check out number 15…oh yeah.

When we first moved out to Cochise County we were so lucky to have a few springs with abundant Mexican poppy (Eschscholzia mexicana) displays. Distant hills and nearby fields glowed golden with a kazillion blooming poppies. Over the years, dry winters made those floriferous springs less common, but in 2020 there was an incredible wildflower display all around us. I remember standing out in some rolling hills at the base of the Pinaleño Mountains and shouting out plant names…well, at least the ones I could remember… it was that day we saw creamcups (or cream cups, your choice) in the wildflower mix. We even came across some pure stands of Platystemon californicus. Yay! Oh for goodness sake, I forgot to mention that creamcups' flowers are white, but the photos show that!  Now you know. Anyway, here's hoping we get a floriferous spring thanks to winter rain and snow. The photos are mine.

Happy New Year!

I could be over thinking the feeling I got when I saw that lone coati from the now named coati mundi bluff, but it was wonderful. The other flora and fauna mentioned in this episode make me feel awfully good. I’ll leave it at that and hope you have plants or critters that make you very happy as well and that 2023 is a year full of wild contentment. Hmm, I’m missing a kangaroo rat photo, but all the photos are mine. Box turtles visit our back yard all summer and that’s Ms. Mesquitey admiring a Toumey oak.

The botanical name of our 3 needle per fascicle (bundle) Chihuahuan pine is Pinus leiophylla var. chihuahuana. Further south into Mexico where the 5 needle version occurs it becomes Pinus leiophylla var. leiophylla. Some botanists, by the way, list the variety as a subspecies. Well, either way it's really a neat native pine here in the borderlands. The photos are mine and taken in the Chiricahua Mountains where we were wandering around looking for a Christmas tree. Below is a photo of large sprout coming off a pine trunk. It was an area that burned during the 2011 Horseshoe Two Fire and some of the surviving fire damaged trees put out large crown-like sprouts. That's fascinating and unusual for a pine species. And now you know.

I grew and sold California buckthorn for several years. Early on I sold it wholesale to other nurseries, but I also sold it at Farmers Markets in Cochise County. Apparently I'm a terrible plant promoter and the plant never really got popular, at least in my circles. It's ironic because in California there are some named cultivars (nativars) sold in nurseries. Anyway, you should check with your favorite native plant nursery to see if they grow it. We’ve had some nice specimens over the years at our little homestead and thanks to birds we've had a couple volunteers pop up around the place. The photos are of a volunteer growing next to our barn. I love it! (That's a sotol stalk in the background.) And listen, don't go grinding up the seed of Frangula californica to make a coffee substitute. It would be dreadful and make you feel very bad…guaranteed. There are certainly other medicinal uses and you may also want to look up California buckthorn's northwest relative Frangula purshiana or cascara sagrada. Now you know. The photos are mine. I already said that.

Leslie Newton Goodding had a busy career. It was when he worked for the U. S. Department of Agriculture that he collected the type specimen for the willow jabbered about in this episode. It was the American botanist Carleton Roy Ball, a Salix specialist (geek), who honored Goodding with the species name. One of the things that caught my attention when reading about Leslie Goodding was that at some point he taught High School in Bisbee, as well as Benson. I bet those teaching gigs supported his plant explorations around southern Arizona. There are a bunch of Salix spp. in Arizona. My Arizona Flora (1960) lists 16 species and I get a kick out of a more current reference that says “nearly 20 species.” So who knows? I do know that Goodding willow is the most common willow in the southwest and found along streams, meadows, ponds, and wet places below 7,500 ft. The photos are mine of Salix gooddingii by a pond and in glorious fall foliage.

It was the American botanist Soreno Watson, that named the onion collected in Tanner's Canyon of the Huachuca Mountains to honor Sara Plummer Lemmon. He made no mistake who it honored by using her maiden name, Allium plummerae. Common names of this borderlands native 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 (Allium plummerae) taken at Onion Saddle in the Chiricahuas, but I couldn’t find them. (Why do I think they are 35 mm slides?) Instead I offer the cover of the book The Forgotten Botanist by Wynne Brown. It's recommended reading.

After reading the section about the canyon tree frog (Hyla arenicolor) in my old Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians by Robert Stebbins, I had to read it aloud to you. Doesn't it just make you want to get out and find canyon tree frogs? Stebbins not only wrote the field guide, but did all the illustrations as well. And if your interest is piqued, there is an updated 2018 edition. Two other valuable field guides for us herpers, expert and otherwise. (I'm the latter) A Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptile in Arizona, Holycross, Brennan, Babb. This one rides in our truck. Arizona's Amphibians and Reptiles, A Natural History and Field Guide, John C, Murphy and others This one I pull off the shelf when I get home. Kids, collect the whole set! The photos are mine.

I guess to truly be a fandango I would need a partner and maybe some castanets, but the loose rock fandango can get pretty elaborate with elements of modern dance, hokey pokey, ballet and of course, some jazz hands thrown into the mix. The expression “dance like no one is watching'' comes to mind and I certainly hope so. The photos are mine. I thought you'd like to see the fraction of the Galiuro Mountains (Galuros!) I poke around in. Shin daggers are Agave schottii and the photo is of a very small clump. Multiply those by several hundred thousand and you get an idea of what you're hiking in on many mesas and slopes. Yikes and ouch! But hey, walking slowly and observing the flora, fauna, geology and distant vistas is the most wonderful thing. Life is beautiful. Yeah, it is.

It's fun to have favorite plants to look for on excursions into the hills. Looking back at photos and my notes, we have been checking on this particular population of Lemmon's milkweed for a few years. I'm guessing that as long as we're in the area, we'll continue to stop by for a visit. And yes, I did grab a couple seed pods (follicles) from a plant. Stay tuned. Botanical names of plants are usually followed by the name of who named it…the author citation. The genus Asclepias is followed by an L. That's Linnaeus. And if one looked through the numerous species names (200 plus), after tuberosa you see the citation L. Someone sent Linnaeus a dry specimen of a North American milkweed and Carl named it. So he is cited for both the genus Asclepias and the species tuberosa. But listen, it was the famous American botanist of the 1800s, Asa Gray that honored the husband wife botanists John and Sara Lemmon with the name lemmonii, for the species jabbered about in this episode, Asclepias lemmonii. Yay! The photos are mine.

What a fun discovery in the desert east of Douglas, Arizona. There is just something about these large spinescent shrubs in the buckthorn family, Rhamnaceae. I love Condalia warnockii and friends who frequent the western deserts of Arizona love Condalia globosa…okay, me too. And now I'm adding Condalia correllii to my favorite spinescent shrub list. And hey, it was a guess, but yes the specific epithet correlli is named for botanist Donovan Stewart Correll. Oh, and as far as wondering whether Antonio Condal and Jean Pierre Florens knew of one another,  (what was that about?) well, only if either one could time travel. The photos are mine and taken on the day described in this episode. Check out the spines. Ouch!

The genus Heuchera is found in the saxifrage family, Saxifracaceae, with 80 other genera that includes the genus Saxifraga and its 400 species. Yikes! My old (1976) Hortus Third says that there are about 35-50 Heuchera species found in North America and they are largely western. Eight species are found in Arizona and Heuchera sanguinea is found in Arizona, New Mexico and southward, of course. Ms. Mesquitey and I always find it in rocky shady areas, like the shady side of a mountain or hill sides where it's also moist. My ancient Kearney and Peebles, Arizona Flora (often referred to simply as “K and P” by plant geeks) says it found from 4,000 to 8,500 feet in elevation. And it blooms through the summer and into October. That’s pretty cool! The photos are mine. The flowers are beautiful, but check out those basal leaves as well.

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 photo of the maple in its fall glory is by Max Licher and taken from SEINet. Thank you.  And below is my photo of scarlet sumac on the rocky slope mentioned in this episode.

My morning ditties are not nearly as amazing as the song of a curved bill thrasher, but they help me begin the day. If I start thinking about the groundwater pumping in the the Sulphur Springs Valley of Cochise County, Arizona, I'll want to sing dirges, so singing to the flora and fauna around our little homestead is a good thing. 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 along streams or very nearby. The plant in our yard, where I sometimes wander by singing, is a large shrub (6' X 6”), but on occasion in the wild I've seen it as a vine and twining up into oaks. Make up your mind Lonicera albiflora! The photos are mine. The flowers and the fruit are beautiful!

There are a dozen species of Melampodium and I wonder which one Linnaeus was looking at when he honored  Melampus with the genus name. And I wonder when the genus name started being misinterpreted to mean blackfoot and not honoring the mythological soothsayer.  The genus translated as blackfoot sure had (and has) a lot of folks scratching their heads about the meaning. “What or where is the blackfoot on this plant?” But listen, the neat thing I learned about Melampus, besides him being a “legendary soothsayer” was that he was “reputed to understand the speech of all creatures.” My kind of guy. Er…god. This was a fun discovery for me in the old paperback booklet of plant names. If you are a total plant geek and interested in plants named from Greco-Roman mythology (not me, of course), the book Gods and Goddesses in the Garden by Peter Bernhardt is a fun read and though Melampus isn't mentioned, there are plenty other mythological characters and botany through out. Yay! The photos are mine. The little purple flower peeking through is the wonderful Allionia.

It''s true that every year I jump and shout about the fall blooming plants in the Aster family (Asteraceae) and I proclaim that there should be a festival to celebrate these wonderful fall bloomers. It's a tradition I guess …me getting excited about fall bloomers…I mean the plants, well they do their thing whether I get excited or not. Anyway, how fun to come across clumps of Gregg's mistflower out in the desert scrub. What a marvelous plant! Its botanical name used to be Eupatorium greggii and 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. Lucky you the listener that I ran out of time. Gregg's mistflower (Conoclinum dissectum) is an amazing butterfly magnet and as I mentioned it's grown commercially and is no doubt available at your favorite nursery. Very cool! The photos are mine. I hope they inspire you get out into desert, the foothills or the sky islands this fall. What a season!

It''s true that every year I jump and shout about the fall blooming plants in the Aster family (Asteraceae) and I proclaim that there should be a festival to celebrate these wonderful fall bloomers. It's a tradition I guess …me getting excited about fall bloomers…I mean the plants, well they do their thing whether I get excited or not. Anyway, how fun to come across clumps of Gregg's mistflower out in the desert scrub. What a marvelous plant! Its botanical name used to be Eupatorium greggii and 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. Lucky you the listener that I ran out of time. Gregg's mistflower (Conoclinum dissectum) is an amazing butterfly magnet and as I mentioned it's grown commercially and is no doubt available at your favorite nursery. Very cool! The photos are mine. I hope they inspire you get out into desert, the foothills or the sky islands this fall. What a season!

Fall gets me excited and fall color is a crazy combination of blooming plants and plants with leaves changing color as they prepare to go dormant. Crazy fall! Mountain oxeye (Heliopsis parviflora) is a real borderlands species, found from 4,000 to 8,000 feet in the mountains along the Arizona, New Mexico, Texas border and southward into Mexico. I learned that the red bordered satyr (Gyrocheilus patrobas) flies from mid August to November and can be found in the mountains of southeastern Arizona. I had a couple friends who also noticed large groups of them flying and puddling along creeks in the Chiricahua Mountains. I think it is so cool that the host plant for this beautiful butterfly is bull grass (Muhlenbergia emersleyi), a favorite bunch grass of mine that has tall purplish seed head plumes. Another good reason to head for this hills this fall; mountain oxeye and red bordered satyrs await you. Oh my! The photos of mountain oxeye are mine. The red bordered satyr on Ageratina is courtesy of my friend Taylor Anne. Thank you Taylor.

Fall gets me excited and fall color is a crazy combination of blooming plants and plants with leaves changing color as they prepare to go dormant. Crazy fall! Mountain oxeye (Heliopsis parviflora) is a real borderlands species, found from 4,000 to 8,000 feet in the mountains along the Arizona, New Mexico, Texas border and southward into Mexico. I learned that the red bordered satyr (Gyrocheilus patrobas) flies from mid August to November and can be found in the mountains of southeastern Arizona. I had a couple friends who also noticed large groups of them flying and puddling along creeks in the Chiricahua Mountains. I think it is so cool that the host plant for this beautiful butterfly is bull grass (Muhlenbergia emersleyi), a favorite bunch grass of mine that has tall purplish seed head plumes. Another good reason to head for this hills this fall; mountain oxeye and red bordered satyrs await you. Oh my! The photos of mountain oxeye are mine. The red bordered satyr on Ageratina is courtesy of my friend Taylor Anne. Thank you Taylor.

The botanical name for jackass clover is Wislizenia refracta and for clammy weed it’s Polanisia dodecandra. I translate those very cool names in this episode. They are both in the Cleome family Cleomaceae having left the caper family, Capparaceae, due to DNA analysis. Well, fine! But listen many of the plants in Cleomaceae can be quite aromatic or foetid smelling.  Your choice and both jackass clover and clammy weed live up to that description. I think I showed great restraint, by the way, in not shouting jackass several times during this episode. I only tell you this so you can see how I've matured over the years.  And hey, the photos are mine. The flowers of both species, the jackass clover above and clammy weed below, are beautiful!

The botanical name for jackass clover is Wislizenia refracta and for clammy weed it’s Polanisia dodecandra. I translate those very cool names in this episode. They are both in the Cleome family Cleomaceae having left the caper family, Capparaceae, due to DNA analysis. Well, fine! But listen many of the plants in Cleomaceae can be quite aromatic or foetid smelling.  Your choice and both jackass clover and clammy weed live up to that description. I think I showed great restraint, by the way, in not shouting jackass several times during this episode. I only tell you this so you can see how I've matured over the years.  And hey, the photos are mine. The flowers of both species, the jackass clover above and clammy weed below, are beautiful!

At our little homestead we have more than enough canyon grape vines (Vitis arizonica) to share with the voracious caterpillars of the western grape skeletonizer. That said, I doubt I'll get an invitation to be a spokesperson for the vintners of the Willcox wine region (the wine capitol of Arizona!) if I'm heard happily jabbering about western grape skeletonizers. But listen, I suspect the vineyards have Harrisina metallica pretty well figured out and I learned that there are organic ways to deal with these native rascals in a vineyard setting. Problem solved. The photos are mine. The moth is on the flowers of white brush (Aloysia gratissima) blooming conveniently below some canyon grape in our yard. The munching caterpillars look like they're wearing colorful striped sweaters.

At our little homestead we have more than enough canyon grape vines (Vitis arizonica) to share with the voracious caterpillars of the western grape skeletonizer. That said, I doubt I'll get an invitation to be a spokesperson for the vintners of the Willcox wine region (the wine capitol of Arizona!) if I'm heard happily jabbering about western grape skeletonizers. But listen, I suspect the vineyards have Harrisina metallica pretty well figured out and I learned that there are organic ways to deal with these native rascals in a vineyard setting. Problem solved. The photos are mine. The moth is on the flowers of white brush (Aloysia gratissima) blooming conveniently below some canyon grape in our yard. The munching caterpillars look like they're wearing colorful striped sweaters.

This episode is a reminiscence sparked by some photos taken over 60 years ago. I'm pretty sure my father took the photos, because I can't remember him ever being without a camera. So, thanks dad, I love these. I only wish you were around so I could tell you. The color photo is mine of our daughters Katy and Sarah in the Gila National Forest where we used to summer camp. Kids and nature. And finally, thanks to Cricky for the friendship so many years ago and to Ms. Mesquitey for the friendship now and onward.

The photos are mine of the Mirabilis longiflora flowers and Manduca sexta, the Carolina sphinx moth and tobacco hornworm. Note the seven streamline white stripes and the red horn on the tobacco hornworm. The adult moth, has some pretty cool markings as well. We don’t find many tomato hornworms (M. quinquemaculata) in our garden, the tobacco hornworm being the predominant glutton. Maybe the Carolina sphinx moth (M. sexta) hits the long flower four o’clock found around our home in between visits to Datura? OR more likely the 5 spotted hawkmoth leaves the research scientists in the nearby hills and hangs out at the Mesquitey homestead. Thanks to friends Janine McCabe and JenJen Zen, who whether they know it or not…now they do…were part of this moth journey.

The photos are mine of the Mirabilis longiflora flowers and Manduca sexta, the Carolina Sphinx moth and tobacco hornworm. Note the seven streamline white stripes and the red horn on the tobacco hornworm. The adult moth, has some pretty cool markings as well. We don't find the tomato hornworms (M. quinquemaculata) in our garden, so I guessing that it’s the Carolina sphinx moth (M. sexta) that visits the long flowered 4 o'clock at our home, not knowing about its exclusivity, and shoot, it may even share with the white lined sphinx moth (Hyles lineata). Whaaaa? And hey, maybe the 5 spotted hawkmoth only hangs out in the nearby hills with research scientists. Fine! Thanks to Janine McCabe and JenJen Zen, who whether they know it or not…now they do… steered me in the right direction on these moths. Yay!

Turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) are wonderful and lots of folks agree. The little town of Bisbee in the Mule Mountains of Cochise County, Arizona celebrates the return of the turkey vultures with a festival and parade every March. If you have hankering to go to Ohio where turkey vultures are called buzzards, the town of Hinckley has been celebrating the return of buzzards in March since the mid-1950s. The common name buzzard, by the way, came across the ocean with early colonists who thought the huge birds resembled the hawks (buzzards) of their home country. I can't think of anything really wonderful to say about the invasive plant buffalo bur (Solanum rostratum)…well, it is interesting, like lots of plants in the genus Solanum… it is a North American native (Great Plains) …cool star shaped flowers that display heteranthery (homework!)…well, it's here to stay, so may as well learn it. The photos are mine. The little black dots in the tree are vultures.

Turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) are wonderful and lots of folks agree. The little town of Bisbee in the Mule Mountains of Cochise County, Arizona celebrates the return of the turkey vultures with a festival and parade every March. If you have hankering to go to Ohio where turkey vultures are called buzzards, the town of Hinckley has been celebrating the return of buzzards in March since the mid-1950s. The common name buzzard, by the way, came across the ocean with early colonists who thought the huge birds resembled the hawks (buzzards) of their home country. I can't think of anything really wonderful to say about the invasive plant buffalo bur (Solanum rostratum)…well, it is interesting, like lots of plants in the genus Solanum… it is a North American native (Great Plains) …cool star shaped flowers that display heteranthery (homework!)…well, it's here to stay, so may as well learn it. The photos are mine. The little black dots in the tree are vultures.

I grew up in the land of the black walnut, Juglans nigra. And if you grew up in the eastern US, then you did too. It has a very large range in eastern North America.  And the eastern US forests have pecans, hickories and walnuts, all of which are trees in the walnut family, Juglandaceae! Juglans major is the only species of walnut in Arizona. The species J. microcarpa is not that far way to the east in New Mexico and Texas and there are rumors of it being found in Arizona. More on that in future episodes! Anyway, I love Arizona walnut! I've collected walnuts all over the borderlands and grown it for many years. It's a fast grower when it's young and grows to a magnificent long lived shade tree. Plant one for your kids or grand kids, or great grand kids or great great grand kids. The photos are mine and taken at our home.

I grew up in the land of the black walnut, Juglans nigra. And if you grew up in the eastern US, then you did too. It has a very large range in eastern North America.  And the eastern US forests have pecans, hickories and walnuts, all of which are trees in the walnut family, Juglandaceae! Juglans major is the only species of walnut in Arizona. The species J. microcarpa is not that far way to the east in New Mexico and Texas and there are rumors of it being found in Arizona. More on that in future episodes! Anyway, I love Arizona walnut! I've collected walnuts all over the borderlands and grown it for many years. It's a fast grower when it's young and grows to a magnificent long lived shade tree. Plant one for your kids or grand kids, or great grand kids or great great grand kids. The photos are mine and taken at our home.

This is the time of year when you see desert millipedes out and about on muggy overcast days. Sometimes even crossing the two lane blacktop roads near my home. When that occurs I invariably will see several millipedes crossing the road in the same area, causing me to wonder why we don't have millipede crossing signs along the highway. At least seasonally like the “ice on bridge” of “watch for water” signs. And I think we could agree that a “Millipede Crossing” sign with the silhouette of a millipede would be an excellent sign. But yes, I know it’s not likely that a millipede crossing sign will ever happen. Honestly if I had my way there would be crossing signs for every wild creature found in the borderlands. The poem was originally my contribution to  a poetic inventory of the Saguaro National Monument East done in 2012. The photos are mine.

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,” a good friend botanist/horticulturist gently told me. Where would I be without friends like that? There are close to 100 species of Cnidoscolus found in North America, South America and the West Indies. They range from perennials to shrubs to trees and they’re so fascinating that some folks collect them…Kids collect the whole set! And listen, many of the species used to be in the genus Jatropha, which is so very cool, because I saw Jatropha macrorhiza and Cnidoscolus growing side by in the Mule Mountains. Well, I thought it was cool. If you were to look up Cnidoscolus angustidens on SEINet https://swbiodiversity.org/seinet/ you'd find some neat photos of the flowers with their interesting stamen and pistils. The photos here are mine and taken on the day described in this episode.

At my age I should being thinking more of getting rid of clutter rather than adding to it. I like to tell our daughters Katy and Sarah that some day they can have it all. I'm not sure they find that very funny anymore, but hey, if you're going to inherit the home then I'm afraid the clutter comes with it. I just hope everyone remembers some of the stories that go with it all. Arizona white oak is Quercus arizonica. I've come across some magnificent ones over the last 28 years of living near them and hiking among them. We do have some planted in our yard as well, grown from collected acorns. They too have stories. Oh, and that's Ms. Mesquitey's hand in that photo of the trunk of the huge white oak I’m jabbering about in this episode. The other photos give you a little idea of the sort of clutter found on the book shelves in our home near the banks of the Ol' Guajolote. (Hmm, someone needs to dust.) I'm a big fan of those sombrero ash trays and they can hold some cool stuff. Call me the “King of Klutter!”

San Miguelito (Antigonon leptopus) is quite the Mexican native plant. I read that it's found in habitat not only in Sonora and Chihuahua and southward, but also Baja California. Unfortunately, where this tough Mexican vine has been introduced as an ornamental in more mesic areas like the southeastern US, it has become an invasive varmint. Sad, but true, so don't go sending seed back to friends in Florida. They already have some. And finally; this episode of Growing Native is a tribute to Tucson and the surrounding wild landscape. It's where I first cut my teeth on native plants and animals and I've been on a marvelous journey ever since. The photo of the flowering San Miguelito is not mine, but stolen from Spadefoot Nursery's website, so a thank you to them.

This episode is a reminiscence…something I seem to be doing a lot of lately…and also a plea for getting our children and grandchildren out of doors, be it a back yard or out to the desert. The photos are mine. The Boy’s Book of Frogs, Toads and Salamanders came out in 1957. I got it as a present when I was 9 or 10.  The duded up Sonoran Desert Toad was the logo of the country band The Dusty Chaps.

I hope we all get all of our monsoon fixes this season. One of those for me and maybe you too, will be toads calling from puddles. The photo is mine and taken from our home of storms in the distance as the sun is setting.

I hope we all get all of our monsoon fixes this season. One of those for me and maybe you too, will be toads calling from puddles. The photo is mine and taken from our home of storms in the distance as the sun is setting.