I use the common name wild cotton, but here are some other common names: Thurber’s cotton, desert cotton, and algodoncillo. Your choice, but if in doubt try Gossypium thurberi. I think it’s interesting that in the Southwestern US Gossypium thurberi occurs only in Arizona, but then, southward across the border into the Mexican states of Sonora, Chih…

It was Carl Linnaeus, the king of binomial nomenclature, who decided to use the classical Latin name fraxinus as the genus for ash trees. One hundred years later the American botanist John Torrey gave the species name velutina to the tree I’m talking about in this episode; Fraxinus velutina or velvet ash. There are sixty-five to seventy species of …

Talking about desert broom (Baccharis sarothroides) is a November tradition and so is singing an old hymn that I like to play with. The melody of the song has had quite a journey from a Dutch folk song of the early 1600s to the early 1800s when Eduard Kremser wrote the hymn using the melody. The Kremser starts with the line “We gather together.” I …

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…

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 ar…

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.Av Petey Mesquitey

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 Chiricahu…

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 sp…

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 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 …

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 selec…

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 …

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…

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 ment…

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. Severa…

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 …

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 …

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 …

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

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 ol…

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 pre…

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 co…

I was looking through photos that I’ve taken of this plant over the years and realized I even have 35 mm slides of Jatropha macrorhiza. Slide show! So yeah, this is a favorite plant. And, I love this description from the web site SEINet: Jatropha macrorhiza “is a charismatic plant you won’t forget once you recognize it. The large, palmately lobed, …

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 pa…