Sunday, July 29, 2007

July Heat

What’s blooming in the area: Roses, rose of Sharon, Russian sage, buddleia, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, morning glories, datura, daylily, purple phlox, bigleaf globemallow, bindweed, white sweet clover, goats head, pink and white evening primroses, velvetweed, toothed spurge, first pigweed Queen Anne’s lace, tumble mustard, heliopsis, Tahokia daisy, cultivated and native sunflowers, golden hairy aster, goldenrod, hawkweed, horseweed, goats beard, wild lettuce, sand burs and grama grass seed heads.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Blackberry lily, golden spur columbine, coral beardtongue, hartwegii, squash, perky Sue, fern-leaf yarrow, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, chrysanthemums.

Looking east: Large-leaf soapwort, bouncing Bess, sweet alyssum, pink salvia, veronica, winecup, hollyhock, sidalcea, California and Shirley poppies, pink bachelor buttons.

Looking south: Tamarix, bundle flower, perennial sweet pea, tomatilla, cosmos, zinnia.

Looking west: Flax, catmint, white spurge, caryopteris, purple ice plant, ladybells, sea lavender, Monch aster, purple coneflower.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunia, Dahlberg daisy, tomatoes.

Inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium.

Animal sightings: Birds in cherry tree, gecko, hummingbird moths on large-leaf soapwort, ants, bees, crickets, grasshoppers becoming serious pest.

Weather: Storms continued to blow through with more clouds than water; days remained hot.

Weekly update: Burn out, brown out, heat stress. Whatever you call it, it happens every year as regularly as the earth revolves around the sun.

This year began the same. Ladybells came up as densely as a groundcover, then plants disappeared. Catmint started blooming, then stems flopped and leaves at the base turned brown. Perennial sweet peas started to bloom, then the leaves turned brown and died out.

Then something different happened. Despite day after day of 90 degree heat, some ladybells did not evaporate, but have been blooming since July 2. Six Hills Giant revived with new stems from the base that have filled in the bare spot with a mound of leaves and flowers. A couple weeks ago, my sweet peas put out new leaves, and two weeks ago their first flower.

Why?

Plants have simple imperatives. Chloroplast segments in leaf cells use energy from the sun to manufacture food from water and carbon dioxide, the one coming up from the roots, the other through pores near the chloroplasts. Summer heat disrupts the equilibrium when more water is lost through leaf stomata than roots can replace.

However, it’s not simply the midday sun. Plants like my squash adapt and wilt, only to revive in the night. Others close their pores in the day. Tamarix concentrate its photosynthesis in the hours after dawn. The controlling condition is that night temperatures must drop. If they remain high, plants can’t use their night shifts to replace water they sweated. So far this year, even if early evenings have been progressively warmer, early morning hours have stayed cool.

Water crises don’t just arise from a lack of rain. During the severe drought a few years ago, I continued to water beds at night. Even so, the native sunflowers got about a foot high, then stopped growing and eventually disappeared without blooming. This year, I have one 6' high that has its first flowers, and others still waist high and growing.

Back then winds that normally absorb water when they pass over distant reservoirs, full rivers and summer mountain snowfields arrived so barren they cannibalized water from plant tissues. Even though we haven’t had much rain since June, storms continually blow through and equalize water pressures between leaf sensors and the atmosphere.

The intensity of the sun at 6,000' and 36 07 N latitude also matters. Ladybells come from northeastern Asia, catmint from the Caucasus, and sweet peas from southern Europe. The first fails in July in Maryland, the second on the Georgia piedmont after a few seasons, the last during summers in the Kentucky foothills. Problems always appear around the solstice and begin to disappear a month or so later when sun angles change.

Microclimatic variations are so subtle that sweet peas can bloom all summer four miles away and nearer the river. Two patches are under old trees, the other in the sun in soil thrown along the side of a ditch. Closer to where I live, shaded sweet peas clinging to a chain link fence awoke from their summer hiatus Friday morning.

So what’s been special about this July?

Government weathermen only record temperature, humidity and precipitation, then for cities a thousand feet higher or lower than Española. Botanists can’t predict how individual species will respond to combinations of air and water without more research. Plants themselves are the ones who report afternoons this summer have been beastly but, if they’ve been able to protect themselves, it’s been a very good year.

Notes:
Anderson, Jay E. “Factors Controlling Transpiration and Photosynthesis in Tamarax Chinensis Lour,” Ecology 63:48–56:1982.

Armitage, Allan M. “Nepeta,” in Herbaceous Perennial Plants, 1989.

Scausey. “Adenophora Latifolia - Ladybells,” Scausey's Journal, available on-line.

University of Kentucky. “Lathyrus - Sweet Pea,” Kentucky Garden Flowers, available on-line.

Photograph: Perennial sweet peas with dead leaves in background, 28 July 2007.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Petunia

What’s blooming in the area: Roses, rose of Sharon, Russian sage, buddleia, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, sweet peas, datura, daylily, purple phlox, mullein, bindweed, white sweet clover, goatshead, velvetweed, toothed spurge, Queen Anne’s lace, tumble mustard, heliopsis, chrysanthemum, Tahokia daisy, farm and native sunflower, golden hairy aster, goldenrod, paper flower, goatsbeard, hawkweed, horseweed, wild lettuce, corn, beans; red showing on apples. Áñil del muerto cut down at house with sheep; English plantain cut down across drive.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Miniature roses, coral beardtongue, hartwegii, squash, perky Sue, fern-leaf yarrow, chocolate flower, blanket flower, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan.

Looking east: Small and large-leaf soapworts, snow-in-summer, bouncing Bess, sweet alyssum, pink salvia, veronica, winecup, hollyhock, sidalcea, California and Shirley poppies, pink bachelor button; one pink is back.

Looking south: Tamarix, bundle flower, morning glory, tomatilla, cosmos, zinnia.

Looking west: Flax, catmint, white spurge, caryopteris, purple ice plant, ladybells, sea lavender, Monch aster, purple coneflower.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunia, Dahlberg daisy, marigold, tomatoes.

Inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium.

Animal sightings: Hummingbirds, grasshoppers, crickets, ants, bees, dragonfly; hummingbird moths on large-leaf soapwort; whatever quail and yellow-bellied birds eat near my fence must be available now.

Weather: Hot days, cool mornings, rain late in week.

Weekly update: Petunias exist for one simple reason. They bloom. Any where, any time, all summer, they bloom.

They were bred to bloom. The first hybrid appeared in England in 1834, the year after sheet glass was introduced. They were grown in the new hothouses, then transferred to massed beds whose primary appeal was color.

They may have been smelly and sticky. They may have gotten scraggly as terminal flowers continued on longer and longer stems. No one cared, if there were enough of them, and they kept producing bright funnels of five-petaled flowers.

The first petunias I bought in Michigan in 1986 were Cascades that boasted large red flowers all summer. Alas, Pan American was replacing them with Supercascades that not only did not bloom, but died when they were transplanted.

Stokes told its growers it was offering Supercascades because they flowered three days earlier. When energy costs increased in the 1970's, three days meant three fewer days of warm water, heated air, artificial light, and fans.

The first petunias I had that succeeded in New Mexico were California Giants, sold by Burpee in 1998 as an experiment with heritage bedding plants. Theodosia Burr Shepard had developed them around 1900 in Ventura, California. They got leggy by the end of the summer, but they lived to bloom. Burpee didn’t repeat the offer.

I bought fewer plants, and each year what I did buy died. Last year, I found a better place to grow the ornamental nightshades, a more sheltered location with a little less sun. They survived between iris and hollyhocks near a retaining wall, but weren’t particularly prolific.

This year I discovered Easy Wave Cherry in a Santa Fe store. They aren’t the real Wave that sends out legions of emissaries, but a modification which is "earlier to flower under short daylight," produces "more flowers in the paks during spring sales" and has a more domesticated habit.

In fact, they may have been remaindered seed or a rival’s, since Kirin Agribio discontinued cherry in 2003, and resellers stopped offering it last year. My grower may have been using up left over seed or left over labels.

I’ll never know if they are what Daigaku Takeshita intended when he crossed petunia x hybrida with wild species. They don’t ramble like The Wave. Their rangy bare stems have been climbing instead, bearing small flowers since the middle of June.

It’s something to remember, three glorious petunias in twenty some years, each blooming oblivious to its obsolescence. But, oh to have had more from Shepard and Takeshita and others who know petunias are meant to bloom - not just in packs in spring - but all summer, in the garden.

Notes:
Hobhouse, Penelope. Gardening Through the Ages, 1992.

Stokes Seeds Inc. Growers Guide, 1989, 2006 and 2007.

Photograph: Petunias sold as Easy Wave Cherry, near retaining wall with hollyhocks and iris, 15 July 2007.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Squash

What’s blooming in the area: Roses, cholla, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, rose of Sharon, sweet peas, Russian sage, datura, purple phlox, bindweed, white sweet clover, white evening primrose, English plantain, toothed spurge, Queen Anne’s lace, bachelor button, zinnia, Tahokia daisy, first sunflowers, áñil del muerto, golden hairy aster, paper flower, goatsbeard, hawkweed, native dandelion, horseweed, wild lettuce; catalpa pods; corn, tomatoes, chili, onions, squash and other foot high green crops in vegetable patches that are not identifiable from road; local produce stand advertising cherries and peas.
What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Miniature roses, golden spur columbine, coral beardtongue, hartwegii, butterfly weed, squash, perky Sue, fern-leaf yarrow, chocolate flower, blanket flower, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, chrysanthemums.
Looking east: Small and large-leaf soapwort, snow-in-summer, bouncing Bess, pink evening primrose, sweet alyssum, pink salvia, veronica, winecup, hollyhock, sidalcea, California and Shirley poppies.
Looking south: Tamarix, morning glory, daylily, tomatilla, cosmos
Looking west: Lilies, flax, catmint, white spurge, caryopteris, purple ice plant, ladybells, sea lavender, Monch aster, purple coneflower.
Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunia, Dahlberg daisy, marigold, tomatoes.
Inside: Aptenia, kalanchoë, zonal geranium
Animal sightings: Gecko, pair of quail, smaller green hummingbirds, group of yellow-bellied birds, bees, hummingbird moths, ants, aphids, grasshoppers, crickets, squash bug, black widow spiders, Japanese beetles on yellow evening primrose plants, insects too small to name; gopher destroyed roots of baptista and two hollyhocks.
Weather: Hot, but some rain Thursday after midnight; mornings cool; plants still dying along the road, but established trees and shrubs growing.
Weekly update: My squash is producing its first flowers, all males. Luckily, they are the reason I put in seeds. If I depended on the females to bear fruit, I’d starve.
Every time I came home this summer to leaves wilted in the heat, I wondered if they would get this far and pondered the fragility of agricultural life in this corner of the world where people stopped putting in corn a few years ago when it was so dry and, before that, a neighbor told me the only thing grasshoppers weren’t eating were his tomatoes and cucumbers. Corn plots are back this year, but not my neighbor’s front garden.
Times have been hard before. During the depression, frost habitually killed half the peach crop in Santa Cruz, and apricots survived one year in four. In Chimayó, the wheat harvest of 1934 wasn’t sufficient to provide seed for the next year, and they never attempted beans or squash because of the "bug pest."
Farther back, when Francisco Dominguez visited the area in 1776, locusts had been ravaging crops for five years. At San Ildefonso, those who searched for wild food found little, and their neighbors were chary of charity or trade. He reported they had become "cautious" and fear had "hardened their hearts."
Nothing is as stark as the prehistoric Guaje ruin on the Pajarito plateau where the elements uncovered bones that were thin and porous from chronic malnutrition and calcium deficiency.
People didn’t leave here in the 1930's because they discovered cash would stave off starvation if they changed their diet. With the great drought between 1276 and 1299, Anasazi abandoned dryland farming in the highlands east of the continental divide for irrigated crops along rivers.
Who knows what drove the ancients to experiment with plants. The earliest remains of domesticated Cucurbita pepo have been found in a cave in Oaxaca from some ten thousand years ago, four millennia before corn appeared there. Then it was prized for its seeds which contain lutein, carotene and beta carotene; the edible layer evolved later.
Squash, including pumpkins, was important to the pueblo peoples who abandoned the Colorado and Pajarito plateaus. To the west the Hopi roasted the seeds, sliced the meat to dry for winter, and used the blossoms for soup. Here, the Santa Clara boiled or baked the mesocarp in a bread oven.
Cucurbis became more than food; they became a symbol for how people ward off hunger. Families to the west clustered themselves into matrilineal organizations, including the Acoma and Hopi pumpkin clans. Along the rio arriba, the Tewa formed two groups, the summer squash people, who governed during the growing season when fish could be eaten and wild foods gathered, and the winter turquoise people, who ruled when families lived on stored foods and hunted big game.
Squash is also more than dinner to people whose Spanish-speaking parents were the ones who first entered the cash economy offered by the national laboratory. They may not grow it much themselves, but they remember the taste of calabaza. It’s one of the few words that cannot be translated any more than can the pleasant childhood associations of life free of worry.
Notes:Domínguez, Francisco Atansio. Republished 1956 as The Missions of New Mexico, 1776, translated and edited by Eleanor B. Adams and Angélico Chávez.Robbins, William Wilfred, John Peabody Harrington and Barbara Friere-Marreco. Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians, 1916.Smith, Bruce D. "The Initial Domestication of Cucurbita pepo in the Americas 10,000 Years Ago," Science 276:932-934:1997.
Stuart, David E. "Cliff Palaces and Kivas: From Mesa Verdeto Bandelier," Glimpses of the Ancient Southwest, 1985.

US Dept of Interior. Tewa Basin Study, volume 2, 1935, reprinted by Marta Weigle as Hispanic Villages of Northern New Mexico, 1975.

Whiting, Alfred F. Ethnobotany of the Hopi, 1939, cited in Dan Moerman’s Native American Ethnobotany database.

Photograph: Male squash blossoms, 8 July 2007.

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Bouncing Bess

What’s blooming in the area: Roses, cholla, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, sweet peas, Russian sage, datura, bigleaf globemallow, larkspur, purple phlox, purple mat flower, milkweed, tumble mustard, pink and white bindweed, yellow and white sweet clover, velvetweed, yellow evening primrose, wooly plantain, toothed spurge, Queen Anne’s lace, purple coneflower, bachelor button, zinnia, áñil del muerto, golden hairy aster, paper flower, goatsbeard, hawkweed, native dandelion, horseweed, wild lettuce, onions and squash. Apricots fallen near village. Two men were hoeing a corn field early Thursday morning.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Miniature roses, red hot poker, golden spur columbine, coral beardtongue, hartwegii, butterfly weed, perky Sue, fern-leaf yarrow, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, chrysanthemums.

Looking east: Floribunda rose, coral bells, small and large-leaf soapwort, snow-in-summer, bouncing Bess, pink evening primrose, sweet alyssum from seed, thrift, pink salvia, veronica, winecup, hollyhock, sidalcea, California and Shirley poppies.

Looking south: Tamarix, rugosa rose, morning glory, daylily, tomatilla, cosmos.

Looking west: Lilies, flax, catmint, white spurge, purple ice plant, ladybells, sea lavender, Shasta daisy, Monch aster; buds on caryopteris.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunia, Dahlberg daisy, marigold; first cherry tomatoes turning red.

Inside: Aptenia, kalanchoë, zonal geranium

Animal sightings: Hummingbirds, quail, gecko, squash bug, dragon fly, large moths, grasshoppers, crickets; ants climbed stems for seed pods; bees on catmint and Shirley poppies; gopher killed large hollyhock.

Weather: Hot; storm blew through Wednesday, but left neither water nor cool air; trees, grasses and some plants browning; last rain June 27.

Weekly update: With summer heat comes flowers that persist on roadside shade and moisture Down the road, Bouncing Bess grows along walls and fences, much as it did when I lived in Wyandotte County, Ohio.

When I was driving to Upper Sandusky in the 1970's, I wondered how a European native cultivated by bronze age lake people migrated to marginal prairie lands in the midwest. It’s not ubiquitous like Queen Anne’s lace or goldenrod. Someone needs to plant it before its stolonous roots can spread through the damp soil to form long, sinuous colonies.

It could have been something simple. The leaves and roots contain saponins that lather when shaken in water. Claire Haughton suggests bargemen’s wives planted soapwort along canal banks to provide cleansers when they passed through. Today, Saponaria officinalis grows where the Ohio and Erie canal connected Cleveland to Akron.

Possibly German immigrants spread the perennial beyond the Appalachians for medicinal purposes: in the 1650's, Nicholas Culpeper reported they were using it for gonorrhea. Pennsylvania brewers exploited it as a foaming agent. In 1876, Severin Bechler, a native of Baden, arrived in Upper Sandusky from Delphos to the west to open a brewery.

Anyone could have encouraged the two foot plants that resembled pink sweet peas scrambling up both banks of drainage ditches near the road to Upper, but they were in a stretch with German barns and a Brethren church. In 1845, about a sixth of the testaments distributed by the county Bible society were Deutsche.

When I see it growing here I marvel again that it could skip the arid plains and even higher mountains to grow along a fence in front of a fallow garden. It’s unlikely anyone bought it. When I wanted the plant, the only mail order nursery I found happened to be about fifteen miles from Delphos.

It might have arrived with any of the attempts to improve the value of sheep, especially after wool supplanted mutton in the cash economy during the civil war. The Greeks used struthium to prepare yarn for dye. Fullers used the herb to shrink fabrics to make them more airtight. Textile mills planted latherwort along race banks to decontaminate fabrics before sending them to stamping plants.

In the 1940's, Curtin heard the plant called julián in Chimayó, while it was called clavelina elsewhere in the rio arriba. Julio was the local word for loom rollers; clavelina the Spanish term for pinks, another member of the carnation family. The Spanish call this plant saponella.

Any industrial or domestic uses had long been forgotten. Cattle had replaced sheep. Cheap, uniform, commercial yarns had displaced local ones when the railroads made them available. It never entered the curanderas’ pharmacopeia.

Curtin found people kept the five-petaled cymes in bowls to ward off flies. And they still keep them. Yesterday, the smooth, simple stems grew along three drives in Chimayó, and beside the road in front of another two homesteads. Here in the valley, people prefer the roadside where the sun faded flowers graced two places on the main road, one near the orchards, and three on the back road of the village.

Some say its called Bouncing Bess for the barmaids or Bouncing Bett for washerwomen or kiss-me-at the-gate for where it naturalizes. Others rule it an invasive weed. Me, I call it a welcome sight on a hot day, even if the stands degenerate when old blossoms cling while new shoots bloom

Notes:
Cobos, Rubén Cobos. A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish, 1983.

Culpeper, Nicholas. Culpeper’s Complete Herbal and English Physician, 1650's, 1826 edition republished in 1981.

Curtin, L. S. M. Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande, 1947, republished 1997, with revisions by Michael Moore.

Cuyhahoga Valley National Park. “Control Plan for Alien Plant Species - May 1990,” available on-line.

Haughton, Claire Shaver. Green Immigrants, 1978.

Leggett, Conaway & Co. The History of Wyandot County Ohio, 1884.

Sigerist, Henry E. A History of Medicine, 1951, reference to lake people from Christopher Hobbs, “The History of Western Herbalism, “1998, available on-line.

Photograph: Bouncing Bess, about three miles down the road, 7 July 2007.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Cholla Cactus

What’s blooming in the area: Roses, cholla, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, sweet peas, lilies, Russian sage, datura, bigleaf globemallow, velvetweed, purple mat flower, milkweed, tumble mustard, squash, pink and white bindweed, wooly plantain, toothed spurge, Queen Anne’s lace, yellow sweet clover, purple coneflower, áñil del muerto, golden hairy aster, paper flower, goatsbeard, hawkweed, native dandelion; apples visible from road.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Miniature roses, red hot poker, golden spur columbine, coral beardtongue, hartwegii, butterfly weed, perky Sue, fern-leaf yarrow, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, first chrysanthemums; sour cherries more edible.

Looking east: Dr. Huey rose, coral bells, pinks, small-leaf soapwort, snow-in-summer, bouncing Bess, pink evening primrose, sweet alyssum from seed, pink salvia, veronica, larkspur, winecup, hollyhock, sidalcea, California and Shirley poppies, Mount Atlas daisy.

Looking south: Tamarix, daylily, cosmos from last year’s seed, rugosa, floribunda and Blaze roses; fruit on raspberry and tomatilla.

Looking west: Flax, catmint, purple ice plant, sea lavender; buds on ladybells and Monch asters.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunia, Dahlberg daisy, marigold, tomato.

Inside: Aptenia, kalanchoë, zonal geranium.

Animal sightings: Good sized yellow-bellied raucous bird on utility pole; humming bird; white, gray and black-with-yellow butterflies; bees, ladybug, crickets, ants; grasshoppers eating hollyhocks and buddleias; gopher active in neighbor’s garden.

Weather: Hot days cooling off later despite afternoon clouds and winds; rain Wednesday.

Weekly update: The cholla going out of bloom in empty fields stand as reminders of some time before. But when, I wonder, was that before.

Certainly before people settled the area where I live. Only one grows near a village road, and groups are scattered along the ridge to the Española highway. Across the arroyo more survive in a vacant field and a house once had a yard filled, but recent owners tore them out for their dogs.

There are no more cactuses for another mile and a half, then they appear in empty fields and isolated plants bloom in yards, two just beyond fences. I have two, my uphill neighbor has one. Between us and that last vacant land, another has surrounded a 3' shrub with protective rocks in the drive and a nearby neighbor has one by a fence with yucca.

They weren’t always here. In the Cenozoic, this area of alluvial Santa Fe deposits was tilted, the Rockies lifted and a rift opened. In those long eons, some 30 million years ago, the Cactaceae broke away from their portulaca cousins in northern South America, then began moving north.

With the ice age came waters from the north that eroded land and filled the trench to form the Rio Grande. The Jemez volcano collapsed, but not before spewing ash. Ours is the resulting dissected bench land that supports black grama and four-winged saltbush that coexist with Opuntia imbricata elsewhere. There could be no cactuses here before.

Sometime between the great glaciers and 1500 years ago, people in the dry valleys of Mexico, who knew more about wresting an existence from recalcitrant plants than our ancestors, began nurturing wild foods, including agave and opuntia. Pollen from cane cholla has been found in a pithouse near Petroglyphs National Monument in Bernalillo county from a time before pottery and corn.

Perhaps they came here with the Anasazi; pueblos to the south mention cholla more than local ones. Lucile Housley believes its existence near Jemez Pueblo, higher than its normal range, is because humans took it there. Several have suggested they need some active agent to move them any distance from where the fruits and broken branches fall.

Some say they are invaders who’ve encroached on the pure grass lands grazed by cattle after the Denver and Rio Grande created markets for cattle and lightening found less to burn. Others, that they are part of the black grama prairie we’ve lost and disappeared when stockmen burned the spines to feed their animals in bad years.

On the other side of the river, on pueblo and ranch lands where cattle still wander, they are simply there - part of the nondescript scrub blazoned, this time of year, by glints of magenta when tepals catch the light. You no more can see their swollen brush skeletons from the highway than you can know when they came in that far time before.

Notes:Dunmire, William M. and Gail D. Tierney. Wild Plants of the Pueblo Province, 1995.

Flannery, Kent.V. "Los Orígenes de la Agricultura en México: Las Teorías y Las Evidencias" in T. Rojas & W. T. Sanders, Historia de la Agricultura. Epoca prehispánica. Siglo XVI. México, 1985, cited by Marco Antonio Anaya-Pérez, "History of the Use of Opuntia as Forage in Mexico," available on-line.

Hershkovitz, Mark A. and Elizabeth A. Zimmer. "On the Evolutionary Origins of the Cacti," Taxon 46:217-232:1997.

Housley, Lucile Kempers. Opuntia imbricata Distribution on Old Jemez Indian Habitation Sites, 1974, cited by Dunmire and Tierney.

Moerman, Dan. Native American Ethnobotany on-line database.

Photograph: Cholla cactus, 30 June 2007.