Author: cecilyuf

One does not normally think of the desert blooming in the summertime, since most of the showy annuals we are familiar with appear in the spring. However, the Arizona Poppy (which is not actually a poppy) is a striking exception, usually blooming after the start of the summer rains, July through September. The bright orange flowers (1”-3”) are veined with red and can sometimes rival a display of Mexican Gold Poppies. Plants can reach 3”-5” across and up to 1 ½” tall and may be found throughout the lower elevations of Southwestern North America.

Lacking any fragrance, pollinators still find the flowers most attractive, particularly our native bees, but wasps, flies and butterflies will also partake of the nectar and pollen on offer. Naturalist David B. Williams writes:

“The great variety of visitors utilize the flowers in four distinct ways. Unlike many insect visitors to plants, three groups do not play a role in pollination. One group avoids the anthers and stigma by being too small. A second group, including honeybees and larger wasps, extract nectar from under the flower. A third clan only stops by for nectar. A fourth group gathers pollen and nectar from within the flower and contributes to both cross- and self-pollination. Researchers hypothesized that the non-pollinating visitors ‘contributed to the economy of the plant by reducing the quantity of available nectar so that the pollinators have to visit more flowers to get their full nectar supply’.”

The resulting seeds are an important food source for doves and quail.

Caltrops are so named because the fruits of many of the species are shaped like military caltrops, pointy metal objects designed to be strewn in the path of advancing troops to impede their progress by injuring the feet of men or horses, in the case of the cavalry, by puncturing a vehicle’s tires today. Other members of the caltrop family include creosote bush and the introduced European Puncture Vine, also known as Goat-head because the seeds resemble the horned head of a goat. Puncture Vine is a common summer weed in lawns and disturbed areas, an extremely obnoxious plant with the capability of poking holes in flip-flopped feet, or even puncturing a tire. Its well-earned scientific name is Tribulus terrestris — scourge of the earth!

Look for Arizona Poppy along the roadside up and down Oracle Road, north to the Junction. The best viewing should be late summer (August through early September), assuming sufficient summer rainfall.

During the summer rainy period rather large, succulent, sticky plants are found along the floodplains and channels of arroyos throughout the Sonoran Desert. These plants have a long history of use as food and fiber by native peoples. The fruit, known as devil’s claw or in the Tohono O’odham language as “i:huk,” is cooked and eaten when young and tender as are its tasty, oily seeds. The claws are used for basket fibers, the fiber splints being very durable. I have seen baskets used in households and for feasts that have lasted for 100 years without the bottom wearing out. The color of the splints can be white, yellow, black or grey, depending on when the fruit is picked and how it is cured. The preferred red-black color is obtained by picking the fruit while it is green but when its internal fibers begin to stiffen. Waiting too long to pick the fruit results in a hard grey fiber.

Proboscidea parviflora was domesticated in the northern Sonoran Desert, probably by the Hohokam more than a thousand years ago; basketry containing Devil’s Claw has been dated to 600AD. The domesticated form has white seeds and large, long claws up to 12 inches, with three or four claws per fruit instead of two. The wild plants have claws 3-5 inches long and black seeds.

Plants of the genus Proboscidea are found throughout much of North and Central America and northern South America. All have flared tubular flowers and the distinctive horned fruit. Another local species, P. altheafolia, is a root perennial with larger yellow and orange flowers and a smaller fruit than P. parviflora, an annual with cream-burgundy flowers.

Another plant that is closely related to and probably ancestral to Devil’s Claw grows in Mexico and Central America. Martynia annua has a fruit about an inch long with little hooks growing out of its bottom. The fruit acts as a tickseed in animal hair or skin. It takes little imagination to see the fruit enlarging and growing longer hooks until it has become today’s Devil’s Claw. The larger hooks are better grabbers and hook easily onto animal legs and to human feet and ankles. The springy claws help transmit and amplify vibrations to assist the rough seeds out of the woody fruit as the animal moves about.

Devil’s Claw is a heat-loving plant, tropical in origin that likes water but is drought tolerant. In order to grow i:huk in our area, plant seeds about an inch deep between April and September 1. Adequate water will produce more and larger claws, but plants will survive with minimal water once established.

To find wild Devil’s Claws, walk along the banks and bottoms or washes; for the domesticated variety, check out the Ethnobotanical and Sin Agua Gardens here at Tohono Chul.

Consider the mesquite tree. Mesquites are not merely trees; they create a whole ecosystem.  Grubs nibble at their roots. Borers live inside the trunk, and if visible, their pathways would be seen as a beautiful network of engraved tunnels with insect woodcarvers at the ends. The long (3”-5”) catkins of tiny yellow flowers, visited by bees, wasps, flies and beetles, are followed by sweet pods which are food to rodents, rabbits, birds, coyotes, deer and people. Phainopeplas plant their crop of mistletoe upon its branches, to later enjoy the berries. A beetle called the mesquite twig girdler cuts a perfect groove around pencil-sized twigs, naturally pruning and smoothing the outline of the tree. Beautiful black and yellow mesquite bugs suck the sweet sap from growing pods. Bruchid beetles grow up inside mesquite seeds, leaving telltale pinholes in the pods as they exit. A hornworm, with extra rows of spines on its head, eats the leaves. Rust and other tiny fungi live on the leaves, and rhizobium bacteria grow upon the roots, trading fixed nitrogen for sugar from the tree. Mesquite is more than a plant – it is a city.

Mesquite is a lover of water and a seeker of depth, growing best near washes and streams.  Under favorable conditions, mesquite roots can penetrate to great depths — roots were pulled out with ore at the 400-foot level of the San Manuel mine in the 1970’s — and trees on droughty upland sites are usually stunted and shrubby.

The name mesquite is believed to be Aztecan in origin. To native peoples, mesquite was manna (a stable source of food even in times of famine), timber for homes, wood for heat, fiber for baskets and shade from the blazing desert sun.

The new peoples (settlers) used mesquite for lumber and fuel, and cursed it as a weed when it grew in the places where their cattle had destroyed the grasses. Prior to grazing, frequent grass fires had limited mesquite to the wetter habitats. Only now is it slowly being understood that the mesquites have a greater economic value per unit of land than the beef that could be produced if the trees were eliminated.

Mesquite firewood is valuable, imparting a distinctive flavor to meat and vegetables cooked over it, and it burns with a clean, blue flame. Soaking the pods in water and putting them in the fire achieves the same effect in a more environmentally sound manner. Chocolate-colored mesquite lumber sells for a price higher than that of black walnut, usually wholesaling for $4-10 per board foot. Mesquite honey is light-colored and of high quality, comparing favorably with that of clover and alfalfa.

Velvet mesquite is a beautiful, brown-crowned tree, with heavily textured grey-grown bark and undulating arching branches with minutely hairy, blue green leaves. It can grow 60 feet tall, 100 feet wide and up to 6 feet in diameter.

Prosopis usually grows in groves and ranges from the North American great plains to South America, and from sea level to about 5,000; elevation. Mesquite is truly the tree of life in the Sonoran Desert.