Growing Native

A story about how friends always save the day. Alleluia. Photo credit: Marian

I love following the drainages out of the mountains and across the deserts, observing all the plants and animals that follow them as well. Do I always tell you that? Having wild turkeys come out of the nearby mountains and wander by our little homestead reminded me to talk about the magic of canyons and arroyos that cross our deserts. The reintroduction of the Gould’s turkey into the mountain ranges of southeastern Arizona began in the early 1980s and continued through the 1990s. There were blunders and successes. Now a days we can’t go into the mountains without seeing turkeys.…

When the Mesquitey family lived near Tucson I worked in a crazy wonderful nursery that was at the base of A-Mountain (Sentinel Peak) right next to the Santa Cruz River. It was there that I fell in love with the native Fremont Wolfberry, so much so that we propagated it at the nursery and I ended up writing song called When the Wolfberries Bloom on A Mountain. Sad, but true. Anyway, near our home in Cochise County, Arizona we find two species of wolfberry; Lycium berlandieri and L. pallidum (this episode). And here is good news… we need all we…

I hope you’re getting a chance to do some wandering this spring…maybe your backyard or a nearby park or even out in the wild. I owe you an episode about pale wolfberry (Lycium pallidum) and I’ll do that, but this bright little annual that looks so much like a dandelion is abundant around out little homestead this April. I like the common name Fendler’s desert dandelion and of course I like the botanical name Malacothrix fendleri. The photos are mine and taken very near our home. The underside of the flower helps identify it from other dandelion-like flowers you may…

Seems every few years I revisit this old poem/song of mine. It’s a true story. Oh, and the band I was in back in those Tucson days was The Dusty Chaps. The photos are mine of some of the desert that blew my mind back then and still does.

It is the ground dried fruit of Rhus coriaria that’s used in cooking throughout the Middle East. The fruit of our southwestern species of sumac is almost always used as a refreshing tart drink and you come across local names like Apache kool-aid, sumac-aid or Rhusade. And, it has been used that way by indigenous folks for centuries. Reem Kassis is the author/chef I was reading about in The New Yorker. She is the author of the cookbooks The Palestinian Table, The Arabesque Table and the children’s book We are Palestinian, A Celebration of Culture and Tradition. The photos are…

Penstemons are in the Figwort Family, Scrophulariaceae. There are about 250 species and the majority of them, 99.9999%…okay I dunno, but there is only one other species somewhere in Eastern Asia… are found in North America and most of those are in the western United States. Lucky us and yay! Oh, and here is a fun factoid: It was botanist David Mitchell in colonial Virginia who suggested the name Penstemon to a plant he was working with, but he didn’t explain the name. Other botanists thought Mitchell was referring to the five stamen of the flowers using the Greek pente…

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…

Quercus toumeyi Arizona Sonora border foothills oak The photos are mine.

I was mistaken about Arivaca’s vulture celebration. It is not early March, but later in the month. Apologies to them, but hey, the good news is that you can celebrate turkey vultures all of March. Yay! We’ll have some small flora and fauna spring celebrations at our home. Your home too? Hey, check your very local listings for flora and fauna spring celebrations! Cool posters below for both Bisbee and Arivaca celebrations.

I have so many memories of hikes or journeys in southern Arizona that include walnut trees…sometimes up high in the mountains or as I mentioned in this episode, a riparian canyon cutting into the Sonoran Desert. They’re part of the flora and fauna that make the borderlands so diverse, beautiful and occupied, not vacant. The photos are mine and taken at our home.  

The etymology of the word mistletoe is all over the place and has been traced to Old English, Middle English, Anglo Saxon and old German…a mix of all of the above. I do like the meaning “dung on a twig.” And listen, mistletoe is really an excellent plant for birds, so why don’t native plant nurseries offer Phoradedron californicum for your ironwood or mesquite or catclaw? Ask your favorite nursery person for dung on a twig! The photos are mine. Look at those berries!  

When I used to give talks I would always show photos and talk about our regional yucca species; Yucca elata, Y. baccata and Yucca madrensis… Yucca madrensis, by the way is the former Yucca schottii, but here’s what’s cool about this resident of the Madrean Evergreen Woodlands; it’s pollinated by a different moth species than Y. baccata or Y. elata. They each have their own yucca moth species doing the pollinating. Cool? Very! Well there’s some more to know about this yucca, soo, you could pull a book or two off the shelf or you can grill your favorite nursery person with…

I read in HORTUS THIRD that there are about 150 species of Vaccinium found in “cool temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere,” 40 of which are found in North America. In this episode I rattle off some of the common names I came across, but think of all the hundreds of names indigenous peoples must have given to these shrubs. Pretty cool. I love the common name whortleberry and there are other Vaccinium species called whortleberry. Lingonberry is red whortleberry or bilberry is bog whortleberry and the list goes on. It’s all wonderfully confusing. If my hunt and gather for…

Anyone who lives in groundhog country will have a woodchuck tale or two to tell. Growing up in Kentucky I sure did. The first piece I wrote for a poetry class I took at the University of Arizona in 1969 was about groundhogs. I’ll spare you. Oh, and my friend Russell Lowes shot me a note regarding marmots in Arizona. A few years ago while backpacking in the Kachina Wilderness near Flagstaff he and fellow hikers saw yellow bellied marmots. That’s pretty darn cool! So, I’m corrected and excited about marmots in Arizona. Thank you, Russell. Anemone tuberosa is truly…

This is an episode about hearing my heart beat. I initially was going to talk about the noise made by ORVs, ATVs, SUVs and pickup trucks out in the deserts and hills. I fall in the “pickup truck” category. Don’t want you thinking I’m a holier than thou sorta guy…ha! Anyway, guess I’ll pontificate about all that another time. You’re welcome. So, this is an episode about hearing my heart beat while hanging out on a rocky slope in the Galiuro Mountains. The photos are mine.

Surely I’m not the only person who sits around reading field guides by a warm wood stove. And our field guides do end up in the truck headed out to the borderlands. Hey, Jim Koweek and I met in 1980, hmm, maybe 1981, but yeah, it is an old friendship. And listen, besides Sonoran Desert Plant ID for Everyone, Jim is also the author of Grassland Plant ID for Everyone, except folks that take technical stuff too seriously. Yes, that’s the title and the two books look very good together on a truck seat. Oh, and excellent reading around a…

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.  I’m a terrible plant promoter I guess and the plant never really got popular, at least in my circles. It’s ironic because in California there are some named cultivars (nativars folks like to say…whatever) sold in nurseries. We’ve had some nice specimens over the years at our little homestead. And birds love the fruit so thanks to them we’ve had some volunteers pop up around the place. The photos are of…

The photos are mine. Coatimundis can make you pretty happy…  

I originally wrote and recorded the song Road Across the Grassland in 2005…well, maybe a little before, but listen, there really is a dirt road that starts about three miles from our home and that road will take you across grassland, through desert scrub and woodland and right to the Mexican border. I love it…I’m guessing you knew that. Thank you so much for listening all these many years and Happy New Year!