Mixed memoir and present day!

Flora of the high desert

I probably acquired a lasting interest in the native plants of Arizona and the rest of the southwestern high desert region when I was very small. When we lived in Jerome, my parents became friends with a neighbor, Leslie N Goodding, who I later came to know  was a world-renowned botanist and expert on dry land plants! He even discovered and classified a number of species and they now bear his name. They often went out on expeditions with him and learned a great deal. By osmosis I guess I did too.

Mom with Mr Goodding- C: 1949

Me about 9, a future outdoors woman!

Although in general I am anything but scientifically inclined, learning the names of things has been a long-term fascination. In the back of my mind lurks the primitive notion that knowing the name of anything gives you power over it! Today I really cannot remember when I could not identify most of the members of the gramma grass family, differentiate  the two main varieties of juniper that grow here, and recognize a variety of weeds, both those that were harmless or even good and those that were not, such as thorny, invasive or poisonous to livestock.

This morning I went off for my normal morning walk with the Red Dogs in tow, Ginger striding along eagerly and Little Rojo wishing to stop and sniff—and pee—on every sprig of grass or clump of weed.  It’s early fall now and the plants are all growing hard to reach the seed producing stage before cooler times shut them down. For fun I tried to identify as many as I could.

Among the weeds there was Puncture Vine, the nasty little spreading weed that produces the terrible goat head or bull head two pronged thorns as seeds—steer the dogs clear of that one! Rag weed is prevalent as is Russian Thistle or tumbleweed—which comes in two kinds, one blooming pink and the other white though otherwise very similar. (Both allergens!)  We saw African Rue, an invasive and a very hardy but not good one. Eradication efforts are very difficult and seem only marginally successful. Several others are familiar but their names either forgotten or never known and I cannot find in my weed books.  One has tiny dark pink flowers that look like pin head roses and another with five petaled fuchsia colored blooms  about ½ inch across, both viney type low to the ground and spreading.

In the grasses, there was the fast growing six weeks gramma and its larger cousin, side-oats gramma, and another that could be either blue or curly—only discernible on close examination. We also steer clear of the Sand Burr, another grass but one that produces round seeds with a dozen ugly, slightly hooked spines on each one. They mat a dog’s coat and often invade hay fields, creating a miserable problem for horses or other stock eating the hay. Back in long ago days, I did a good bit of reaching in and cleaning the burrs out of my equine’s mouths and trying to dig the tips of the thorns out of my own fingers. There is feather finger grass, crested wheat, red spangle-top and a few others in our neighborhood also.

It’s fallish as I said, so that means the mesquite leaves are going dull olive-gray, far from the lovely vivid spring green they show when they first emerge. Beans are ripening and falling, food for many of the wild creatures since they are somewhat sweet and high in protein. Even the creosote is dulling down. It’s normally a kind of acid green with small yellow flowers that turn to fuzzy mini-cotton balls of seeds. Now it too is more grayish or tan with the green.

Many folks think of desert as barren sand dunes but except for a few areas such as the middle of the Sahara and places like our local White Sands, that is not true at all. The low desert has many cacti and a variety of weeds and shrubs. The high desert which ranges up to the lower levels of juniper, pinon pine and some scrub oaks, has a great diversity of plant life and not a lot of barren at all. The streams are edged with cottonwood, sycamore, salt cedar and other trees while the hills have grass and weeds, green when there have been good summer rains and then fading back to the colors that blend with the soil and rocks.

Yes, I love the desert. In theory at least I have lived a number of lives in desert regions, some as a member of earlier Native American tribes and some perhaps even in other worlds. Although most of my ancestry is currently Celtic, mostly Irish and Welsh, the green, moist and misty places are not my heart’s home. Perhaps I--or my energy-entity--has been elsewhere too long although I think I did live there in many past times as well.

Fall mesquite

NM fall flowers

Creosote in bloom