Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey

Cliffrose has had quite a few botanical names. Remember when the botanical was Cowania mexicana var. stansburiana? Okay, I’m old. The current botanical name is, at least for the time being, Purshia stansburyana. Cliffrose is a beautiful and tough native shrub. And, it is so fragrant that usually you smell it before you see it. “What’s that sweet smell? Oh, look a flowering cliff...

It’s true that every year I get excited about fall blooming plants in the Aster family (Asteraceae) and proclaim that there should be a festival to celebrate these wonderful fall bloomers. How fortuitous to come across clumps of Gregg’s mistflower (Conoclinum dissectum) on a fall day out in the desert scrub. What a marvelous plant! And by the way, its botanical name used to be E...

Here is the full botanical name of spreading snake herb: Dyschoriste schiedeana var. decumbens. Someone (Asa Gray?) had fun putting the Greek words together to form the genus meaning difficult to separate, referring to “ the valves of the capsules which adhere tightly to each other.” The specific epithet honors the German physician and botanist Christian Julius Wilhelm Schiede o...

I’m pretty sure I first encountered the plant called mala mujer in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson over 30 years ago. And I’m also pretty sure that I turned that encounter into an episode of Growing Native 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 tha...

In 1881 botanists John and Sara Lemmon were collecting and botanizing in an area called Rucker Valley in the Chiricahua Mountains. And, they were staying at a military camp called Camp Rucker. I mention this because the old Camp Rucker site is very close to where Ms. Mesquitey and I were hanging out. I was so excited …well, I still am… to identify the same buttercup that John an...