Sunday, September 25, 2011

Wild Bush Pea


What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid tea roses, rose of Sharon, Russian sage, buddleia peaked, silver lace vine, red yucca, datura, sweet pea, Heavenly Blue morning glories, purple phlox, Sensation cosmos, French marigolds, alfalfa, pampas grass; red apples in one orchard, others still look barren.

Beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, Indian paintbrush, leatherleaf globemallows, blue trumpets, blue gilia, scarlet bee blossom, white and yellow evening primroses, bindweed, ivy-leaf morning glory, newly sprouted goat’s head, white sweet clover, bush pea, stickleaf, toothed spurge, prostrate knotweed, lamb’s quarter, Russian thistle, amaranth, 3" high pigweed, ragweed, native sunflowers, snakeweed, spiny lettuce, gumweed, Hopi tea, carpets of 6" high áñil del muerto, Tahoka daisy, broom senecio, golden hairy, strap-leaf, purple and heath asters, cockle bur, sand bur, black grama and muhly ring grasses, crust, green moss; gypsum phacelia up; leaves turning red on Virginia creeper and velvetweed.

In my yard, looking east: Garlic chives, Autumn Joy sedum darkened, winecup mallow, sidalcea, large-leaf soapwort, pink evening primrose, Shirley poppies, Maximilian sunflowers, tansy.

Looking south: Floribunda and rugosa roses, reseeded and new Crimson Rambler morning glories; sweet alyssum, moss rose and zinnia from seed.

Looking west: Caryopteris, calamintha, sea lavender, lead plant, perennial four o’clock, David phlox, Silver King artemisia; peach leaves turn yellow and drop immediately.

Looking north: Golden spur columbine, Mexican hat, chocolate flower, blanket flower, yellow cosmos from seed, black-eyed Susan, chrysanthemum.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, pansy, moss rose, nicotiana, impatiens, tomato.

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern.

Animal sightings: Hornets, harvester and small black ants.

Weather: Morning and afternoon temperatures lower; last rain 9/17/11; 12:02 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: It’s a pea. That’s what I said to myself when a flash of bright color stopped me from checking the juniper berries on the other side of the arroyo.

I knelt down to see better. No doubt, it was a pea. The bright rose purple flower was larger and more open than most, but it had the characteristic five petals: the wide top banner, a pair of wings that hung down like puppy ears, and the barely visible pair that makes the snout nosed keel.

There was only one flower to a stem, and the stems appeared in pairs. One bloomed before the other. In many cases, I saw a flower and the dark hammock of a bud. In other cases, one flower was open and the other was fading or tan.

It was the seed pods that most loudly shouted, “Yo! Pea here.” Flat green cases attached by reddish stems crossed by darker veins. When the light shone through, two to four round lumps were visible.

With Procrustean certainty, I know it’s a pea, but a week later I can’t tell you what kind. Botanists have reused terms and invented new ones so often, later taxonomists note the confusion and bypass it by offering their own, new definitions.

The problem began with Friedrich Pursh, who described both his work and the collection of Lewis and Clark. He called a large purple flowered pea with large pods from the Missouri river Lathyrus decaphyllus. However, no specimen survived in either the expedition’s or his herbariums, leaving a broad description that could be attached to anything, including the flower I saw last Sunday.

Thomas Nuttall thought the label really applied to Vicia stipulacea, while Nathaniel Britton used the term for a different large flowered plant from the Rocky Mountains. Frederick King Butters and Harold Saint John decided Pursh’s Missouri river plant was really Lathyrus venosa intonsus. They called the unknown species, which doesn’t reach as far east, Lathyrus eucosmus, and indicated it was partly Nuttall’s Lathyrus polymorphus, but not his decaphyllus. Their examples included some collected in Santa Fe in 1874 and 1897.

Needless to say little one reads can be trusted. No one can be more correct than his or her references. The actual distinctions are traits too minuscule to appear in normal photographs.

Elmer Wooton and Paul Standley used decaphyllus for a “rather handsome” plant with “larger flowers than most of the species” that grew in the “plains and open fields” where it “often becomes a weed in cultivated fields” and didn’t mention the other names.

Daniel Moerman standardized on polymorphus for the species eaten by the Cochiti, Acoma and Laguna and used eucosmus for the plant utilized medicinally by the Navajo. Leonora Curtin identified patito del pais as “Lathyrus decaphyllus (eucosmus" which Spanish speakers in northern New Mexico used to treat toothaches, mumps, tonsilitis, and headaches.

The only thing that says “maybe I’m not a pea, I’m only teasing” are the long, narrow leaves. They form rather shapeless grey-green masses clinging to the sides of the north facing slope of the ranch road that rather resemble some pictures Tom Chester published of Lathyrus brachycalyx zionis from the Bright Angel Trail in the Grand Canyon. That species, which Susannah Johnson and Kelly Allard says is often confused with eucosmos, has sessile pods and only appears in New Mexico around the San Juan tributary to the Colorado river.

More important, the leaves on the plants I saw don’t terminate in tendrils, a trait that separates both Lathyrus and Vicia from other legumes. However, Johnson and Allred suggest that while ecosmus has “well-developed and prehensile” vines at the end of the upper stems with leaves, the lower ones are “short and bristle-like.” No one has commented on the effects of environment on leaf variation, only quibbled on the difference between elliptic-lanceolate and oblong-elliptic.

I suppose it’s safe to call them bush peas, though they don’t all look like bushes, and simply enjoy them for what they are: bright colored pea flowers.

As for the juniper berries that led me up the road where they were blooming only a few have started to turn purple. Most are still grey-green.

Notes:
Butters, Frederick King and Harold Saint John. ‘Studies in Certain North American Lathyrus,” Rhodora 19:160-163:1917.

Chester, Tom. “Plant Species of the Bright Angel Trail: Bush Peavine, Lathyrus brachycalyx ssp. zionis,” available on-line. He wasn’t sure about his identification, since eucosmus has been treated by some as another subspecies of brachycalyx, and consulted Wendy Hodgson, an expert on Grand Canyon flora.

Curtin, Leonora Scott Muse. Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande, 1947, republished 1997, with revisions by Michael Moore.

Johnson, Susannah and Kelly W. Allred. “A Taxonomic Review of the Tendril-bearing Legumes (Leguminosae) in New Mexico: I. Lathyrus,” The New Mexico Botanist number 25:1-7:1 January 2003.

Moerman, Dan. Native American Ethnobotany, 1998.

Wooton, Elmer Otis and Paul Carpenter Standley. Flora of New Mexico, 1915.

Photograph: Pea flower in full bloom and one fading; a pair of pods on another stem, with a dark bud on another; ranch road leaving far arroyo, 18 September 2011.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Rose Queen Salvia


What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid tea roses, rose of Sharon, Russian sage, buddleia, silver lace vine, red yucca, datura, sweet pea, Heavenly Blue morning glories, purple phlox, cultivated sunflower heads bending, Sensation cosmos, alfalfa, pampas grass; red tomatoes visible.

Beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, leatherleaf globemallows, blue gilia, scarlet bee blossom, white and yellow evening primroses, bindweed, ivy-leaf morning glory, goat’s head, white sweet and purple clovers, stickleaf, toothed spurge, prostrate knotweed, lamb’s quarter, Russian thistle, amaranth, pigweed, ragweed, native sunflowers, snakeweed, spiny lettuce, gumweed, Hopi tea, áñil del muerto, Tahoka daisy, golden hairy, strap-leaf, purple and heath asters, sandburs, muhly ring grass, crust, moss, mushrooms; buds on broom senecio.

In my yard, looking east: Garlic chives, Autumn Joy sedum, hollyhock, winecup mallow, sidalcea, large-leaf soapwort, pink evening primrose, Shirley poppies, Maximilian sunflowers, tansy.

Looking south: Floribunda and rugosa roses, reseeded and new Crimson Rambler morning glories; sweet alyssum, moss rose and zinnia from seed.

Looking west: Caryopteris, calamintha, sea lavender, lead plant, perennial four o’clock, David phlox; buds on Silver King artemisia.

Looking north: Golden spur columbine, Mexican hat, chocolate flower, blanket flower, yellow cosmos from seed, black-eyed Susan, chrysanthemum.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, pansy, moss rose, nicotiana, impatiens, tomato.

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern.

Animal sightings: Small bees, hornets, harvester and small black ants.

Weather: Rain several days, followed by morning temperatures in the 40's and fog on the river; last rain 9/17/11; 12:23 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: What with drought and fire and heat, it’s easy to forget that much of this year was dominated by unusual cold. When you’re still cutting dead wood from Dr. Huey roses, it’s even harder to remember that cold is essential for many plants.

Still, when autumn brings cooler temperatures and shorter days, some spring and early summer blooming plants, especially members of the rose family, resume flowering. It’s the time plants like chrysanthemums and cosmos, whose incipient buds need long exposure to daylight, begin to bloom.

Perennial salvias need both cold and long days to flourish. My Rose Queen didn’t do well until last year’s cold winter, and did better last summer than this. I bought four seedlings in 2006, but only one appeared the next year to put up a few stalks with two-lipped tubes jutting from their bases. The same scant squares appeared in 2008, not the flowered-filled stems one sees in catalogs.

Then, the winter of 2010 was cold and the moisture lasted until early May. A seedling appeared. The stalks were never full, but they continued to lengthen to accommodate new stamen-spitting florets into September. Instead of a great flourish, they were bits of color all season.

This past winter was cold and dry. The volunteer joined the parent, but they went out of bloom by the middle of August. Last week, with rain and cool temperatures, a new raceme appeared under a hollyhock leaf on the seedling. It now bristles with flowers, while several conical buds have appeared at the tips of other stems. I can’t find the older plant.

I’ve had the same disappointing experience with the more common blue flowered varieties. East Friesland and May Night didn’t survive a full season. The three Blue Queens I planted in 2007 are all still there, but only one ever bloomed, then just in June.

This summer, for the first time, they threw up a number of thin rods. Unlike the fat Rose Queens, each was dense with flowers. By July, only bare stalks remained with single flowers waving at the tops. While mine finally prospered, the ones in the village, that had produced the past two summers, were invisible, either shorter than usual, darker colored than normal, or intimidated by the weather.

Whether lavender pink or deep purple blue, for rose is a wistful misnomer, they’re all derived in some way from Salvia nemorosa, a clump forming European species more popular in Germany than elsewhere. In the 1930's, Louise Beebe Wilder noted it was rarely offered in this country. Thompson and Morgan offered no seeds in 1955, the year Ernst Pagles introduced Ostfriesland. He’d begun working with the species in 1949 at the suggestion of his mentor, Karl Foerster, who brought out Mainacht in 1956.

Both Foerster and Pagles relied of rigorous selection techniques to develop cultivars that could survive with little maintenance in the cold climate of East Germany. If their plants involved multiple species they were usually the result of unsupervised matings.

Blue Queen has no history: it’s simply described by Tony Avent as “an old seed strain.” The pink is equally obscure: Jelitto Seeds lists Rosakönigin without taking credit for it. Both were being offered by Thompson and Morgan in 1986 when I first got their catalog, but the pink flowered variety wasn’t sold by nurseries like Lamb or Milaeger’s Gardens until 1991, a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Some taxonomists believe nemorosa is the same as Salvia sylvestris, a species found from middle Europe down through the Balkans and east into Kazakstan. Others believe sylvestris is a natural child of nemorosa and Salvia pratensis, which grows in much of temperate Europe. When Jay Walker’s team tested the DNA from a number of species in the mint family, it found pratensis and nemorosa so similar they must have had a common ancestor.

Whatever the differences in parentage, they’re expressed in the ways different varieties respond to the environment. When the Chicago Botanic Garden tested salvias in the middle 1990's, they found May Night much better than East Friesland or Blue Queen, and all were superior to Rose Queen which winter killed, had few flowers, and decreased in vigor over the years. While their experience with the pink variety paralleled mine, their luck with the others in a muggy, prairie lowland was the reverse of mine in a dry, high mountain valley.

Grete Waaseth found the interplay of vernalization and photoperiod for Blue Queen didn’t follow simple, predictable patterns. When Blaukönigin were not exposed to cold winter temperatures, then imitating high sun light with photosynthetic photon fluxes increased their ability to flower at the expense of developing normal levels of crinkled grey-green leaves. However, if the perennials were exposed to 41 degree temperatures for six weeks, then the added energy impulses made no difference when they were later exposed to light for twenty hours a day.

Blue Queens could survive the absence of cold if the sun was more intense, but if they had cold, greater amounts of light didn’t matter.

In contrast, a group led by Todd Lasseigne found that East Friesland, May Night, and a pratensis could all stand days with 104 degrees without injury, but that Ostfriesland and the pratensis didn’t flower, either because they hadn’t been winterized or hadn’t been exposed to the appropriate day lengths. If cold alone wasn’t enough, then neither was heat.

Garden suppliers, unlike botanical gardens, don’t truly care if a plant survives the first winter; they want it to be blooming when they sell it in the spring. Species that don’t bloom until days are long present a problem. When May Night finally did become popular, Avent says, “unscrupulous nurserymen found a plant that would propagate faster” that didn’t perform as well.

A team led by Gary Keever considered the possibility that a long day flower was simply a short night one, and tried to force plants to bloom by interrupting the darkness of their nights. The group shortened the time to first bloom for Blue Queen by seven to twelve days, but only if it treated them in February in Alabama. At other times of the winter, the trick didn’t work.

Why anyone would go to the trouble of growing perennial salvias in the deep south is another question. Both Allan Armitage, in the Georgia piedmont, and the Missouri Botanical Garden, in Saint Louis, say the plant needs cooler nights than they have. The spikes get tall, then floppy, making only the shortest varieties aesthetic.

So why does anyone bother? The pictures, of course, are always tempting, and blooming clumps always look so nice in places like Santa Fé where elevations are higher elevations and moisture greater. But after finally having some winters cold enough for mine to bloom in our long summers, I’m not sure they’ll be worth replacing when they die, which they most assuredly will, sooner or later. They’ve held on, but never acclimated.

Notes:
Armitage, Allan M. Herbaceous Perennial Plants, 1989.

Avent, Tony. “Perennial Salvia: Ornamental Sages for the Garden,” Plant Delights Nursery website.

Chicago Botanic Garden. “A Performance Appraisal of Hardy Sages,” Plant Evaluation Notes Issue 14, 2000.

Keever, Gary J., J. Raymond Kessler, Jr. and James C. Stephenson. “Night-Interrupted Lighting Accelerates Flowering of Herbaceous Perennials Under Nursery Conditions in the Southern United States,” Journal of Environmental Horticulture 24:23-28:2006.

Lasseigne, F. Todd, Stuart L. Warren, Frank A. Blazich, and Thomas G. Ranney. “Day/Night Temperature Affects Growth and Photosynthesis of Cultivated Salvia Taxa,” Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science 132:492-500:2007.

Missouri Botanical Garden. “Salvia x sylvestris 'Rose Queen',” available on-line.

Waaseth, G., S.O. Grimstad and R. Moe. “Influence of Photosynthetic Photon Flux on Floral Evocation in Salvia x superba Stapf ´Blaukönigin´,” Acta Horticulturae 711:235-24:2005.

_____, _____, _____ and R. Heins. “Effect of Photosynthetic Photon Flux and Temperature on Floral Evocation and Development in the Vernalization Sensitive Ornamental Perennial Salvia x superba `Blaukönigin’,” Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science 131:437-444:2006.

Walker, Jay B., Kenneth J. Sytsma, Jens Treutlein, and Michael Wink. “Salvia (Lamiaceae) Is Not Monophyletic: Implications for the Systematics, Radiation, and Ecological Specializations of Salvia and Tribe Mentheae,” American Journal of Botany 9: 1115-1125:2004.

Wilder, Louise Beebe. What Happens in My Garden, 1935.

Photograph: Rose Queen salvia seedling blooming under hollyhock leaves, 11 September 2011.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

The Monsoon Continues


What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid tea roses, rose of Sharon, Russian sage, buddleia, trumpet creeper fewer flowers, silver lace vine, red yucca, datura, sweet pea, Heavenly Blue morning glories, purple phlox, cultivated sunflowers, Sensation cosmos, alfalfa, pampas grass; some corn stalks dried; some sweet pea pods turned brown and emptied; people have cleared their vegetable gardens, leaving only still producing tomato plants.

Beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, leatherleaf globemallows, blue gilia, scarlet bee blossom, white and yellow evening primroses, bindweed, ivy-leaf morning glory, goat’s head, white sweet and purple clovers, stickleaf, buffalo gourd, toothed spurge, prostrate knotweed, lamb’s quarter, Russian thistle, amaranth heads long enough to curve, pigweed, ragweed, native sunflowers, chamisa, snakeweed, spiny lettuce, horseweed, gumweed, Hopi tea, goldenrod peaked, áñil del muerto, Tahoka daisy, golden hairy, strap-leaf, purple and heath asters, sandburs, muhly ring grass, crust, moss, mushrooms; buds on broom senecio; cheat grass coming up; Virginia creeper berries turning purple; pods forming on whorled milkweed.

In my yard, looking east: Hosta, garlic chives, Autumn Joy sedum, hollyhock, winecup mallow, sidalcea, Maltese cross, large-leaf soapwort, Jupiter’s beard, pink evening primrose, Shirley poppies, cutleaf coneflower peaked, Maximilian sunflowers collapsed over path, tansy; buds on pied snapdragon.

Looking south: Floribunda and rugosa roses, reseeded and new Crimson Rambler morning glories; sweet alyssum, moss rose and zinnia from seed.

Looking west: Caryopteris, calamintha, sea lavender, lead plant, perennial four o’clock, David phlox, Mönch asters fading, purple coneflowers nearly gone; buds on Silver King artemisia.

Looking north: Golden spur columbine, Mexican hat, chocolate flower, blanket flower, yellow cosmos from seed, black-eyed Susan, chrysanthemum.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, pansy, moss rose, nicotiana, impatiens; first Sweet 100 tomatoes ripe.

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern.

Animal sightings: Hummingbirds, small bees, hornets, harvester and small black ants, hear crickets.

Weather: Finally getting the long, slow rains we need, but temperatures dropping so low in the night the furnace is coming on; last rain 9/10/11; 12:32 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: The healing’s begun.

We’ve been getting rains now for at least three weeks, much of it coinciding with hurricanes Irene and Lee. However, because they began in late August, and not early July, temperatures have been lower, days shorter and sun angles changing. The recovery has been more like spring, when seedlings and new growth emerge, rather than summer, when existing plants revive.

Along the roadsides, which responded first, the unknown pairs of oval leaves have transmuted into toothed spurge, purslane has arisen, and some ivy-leafed morning glories are blooming. All are plants of late summer.

The only mid-summer pigweed and áñil del muerto seedlings I’d seen before today were in my driveway, mixed with goat’s heads washing down from colonies in my uphill neighbor’s yard. Now, pigweed is sprouting up there as well.

In some barren fields down the road, prickly pear has revived. The pads are shiny enough to reflect light when I drive by in the evening, where before their dull surfaces rendered them invisible. The area between is filled with Russian thistles about four inches high, already capable of blooming and going to seed. In the past those weeds were probably so tall they hid the large cacti bed from the road and discouraged casual intruders.

On the prairie, in small depressions where water collects, or under shading grass clumps, water has remained between showers long enough for new grasses to emerge. There’s also a number of late-summer-germinating prostrate knotweeds. This morning there was new growth on some of the most desolate winterfats, but still only a few new blades have emerged from the established bunches of needle grass.

In the road cut before the arroyo, the broken remains of two bush morning glories someone dug out last spring have poked through the mud that slid into their deep holes. Protecting mud has also washed over the exposed cream tips root in the arroyo, and two tiny buds I saw Monday on the blue gilia were opening this morning.

In the arroyo itself, things have calmed since it last ran. The bottom is still wet in places, but goat’s head and knotweed were the first beneficiaries of the cool damp. However, this morning gypsum phacelia was beginning to germinate under the Russian olive.

The Apache plumes upstream from the tamarix are still blooming, but another in the arroyo bottom has passed and the ones on the prairie bank never bloomed. Chamisa is golden north of town on low land between the Chama and Rio Grande rivers, but only one small shrub had flowers in this arroyo this morning.

White prairie clover normally blooms in summer. Last year its plantain like heads began opening as soon as hurricane Alex brought water July 1. They continued into the first week of August.

This year, green leaves pushed up from root crowns in April, then stopped growing in May. While some were blooming near the road on Santa Clara land on the other side of the river at the normal time in July, I saw no flower buds in the arroyo until the first of August when a couple spikes appeared.

Dalea candida has a long taproot, but that root needs active bacteria to prosper. While W. P. Martin found a number of species in this legume genus lacked rhizobia in Arizona, Oscar and Ethel Allen believe that was an adaption to the arid time they were collected. One would guess the soil organisms need to revive here before the plants can truly prosper.

So far, new growth has emerged from the base of the plant that was blooming, and new stems have pushed up among last year’s bare yellowed stalks on other plants. I don’t know if there’s time for these to reproduce this year, or if they can do no more then prepare the root for another winter.

The more important microorganisms are in the soil crust, that thin layer of cyanobacteria, lichens and mosses that transform nitrogen and carbon from the air into soil nutrients necessary for the succession of grasses. While they spend most of the year as desiccated dark lumps, the blue-green algae resume photosynthesis within minutes of getting wet. Still, it’s taken some time for them to swell enough to be obviously alive and for moss and mushrooms to appear.

In my yard, a thin black layer skimmed the surface of the uphill land on Monday morning where grasses have never revived from grazing decades ago. Later in the day, the water had dried, leaving a lighter colored icing in slight depressions. The patina of cyanobacteria was no longer visible.

Wednesday morning the ground was wet again, apparently from heavy dew. Again, the dark coating appeared before the sun broke through around 9 am. This time I could see little dots of black that could, with time and moisture, grow into clods like those on the prairie. Even a bit of moss appeared in a clump of dead needle grass surrounded by ring muhly grass that had trapped a winterfat seed.

Yesterday morning, in the tail end of another night of soaking rain, the crust had begun to form swallow grey-green islands that mottled the surface, already able to direct flood threatening water away from themselves.

Down the south facing slope there were chaining black threads that, in places, looked more like decaying seaweed in an area where only stumps of bunch grass remain. I assume they’re some form of lichen able to emerge with the cloudy days that have kept the atmosphere cool and moist.

Here and there, in the marbled remains of water, streaks of black appear in the arroyo and the road that leads to it. The fire is still a presence.

On the other side of the river, in places where creeks have a clear path from the Jemez, the banks are covered with black soot. The run-off into Dixon’s Orchard near Cochiti has received the most publicity, but the same dark mud can be seen where the Rio del Oso crosses the Chama highway near Chili north of Española.

Directly across the river, on San Ildefonso land, the arroyos that cross the road rise in badlands that parallel the mountains. Water from the burned canyons can’t reach them. Even so, the ground is covered with grey sand, both in the bottoms and on the steppe, probably from an infiltration of fallen ash.

The Las Conchas fire is not gone. Around 1:45 pm last Saturday I saw a white cloud rising from a canyon to the southwest. Sunday, I saw two different plumes after the rain had stopped about 7 pm. I doubt the original fire flared up, and have no idea what was left for lightening to ignite.

I suppose the fire has been smoldering since July in those canyons, and the rain is finally putting it out in clouds of steam that are still capable of spreading ashes here that turn black when amassed into rivulets by the saving rain.

Notes:
Allen, O. N and Ethel K. Allen. The Leguminosae, 1981; as Petalostemon candida.

Martin, W. P. Observations on the Nodulation of Leguminous Plants of the Southwest, 1948, cited by the Allens.

Photograph: Ranch road, about 9:30 am on 5 October 2009, before the sun could destroy evidence of the previous night’s rain. This road is a continuation of the paved road by my house; there are no sources for the charcoal wash other than the rain or surface ash.

Sunday, September 04, 2011

Blue Gilia


What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid tea roses, rose of Sharon, Russian sage, buddleia, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, red yucca, datura, sweet pea, Heavenly Blue morning glories, purple phlox, cultivated sunflowers, Sensation cosmos, alfalfa, brome and pampas grasses; squash leaves turning yellow.

Beyond the walls and fences: Tamarix, Apache plume, leatherleaf globemallows, scarlet bee blossom, white and yellow evening primroses, whorled milkweed, bindweed, scarlet creeper, goat’s head, white sweet and purple clovers, stickleaf, buffalo gourd, silver leaf nightshade, toothed spurge, prostrate knotweed, lamb’s quarter, Russian thistle, amaranth, pigweed, ragweed, native sunflowers, chamisa near river, spiny lettuce, horseweed, paper flower, gumweed, Hopi tea, goldenrod, áñil del muerto, Tahoka daisy, golden hairy aster, sandburs; buds on broom senecio and heath aster; buffalo gourd gourds.

In my yard, looking east: Hosta, garlic chives, Autumn Joy sedum, hollyhock, winecup mallow, sidalcea, baby’s breath, Maltese cross, bouncing Bess, large-leaf soapwort, pied snapdragon, Jupiter’s beard, pink evening primrose, Shirley poppies, cutleaf coneflower, Maximilian sunflowers, tansy.

Looking south: Floribunda and rugosa roses, Illinois bundle flower, reseeded and new Crimson Rambler morning glories; sweet alyssum, moss rose and zinnia from seed.

Looking west: Caryopteris, calamintha, sea lavender, lead plant, perennial four o’clock, Mönch aster; buds on Silver King artemisia.

Looking north: Golden spur columbine, Mexican hat, chocolate flower, blanket flower, yellow cosmos from seed, black-eyed Susan, chrysanthemum; long green pod on butterfly weed.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, pansy, moss rose, nicotiana, impatiens, tomato.

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern.

Animal sightings: Hummingbirds, hummingbird moth, small bees, hornets, harvester and small black ants, hear crickets.

Weather: Rain several days, with a lot of standing water along the road late Thursday afternoon; saw smoke in the Jemez yesterday afternoon; last rain 9/3/11; 12:51 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: The monsoon rains have finally arrived. The roadsides, prairie and arroyos are reacting, each in their own way.

The shoulders are a refuse of summer annual seeds that wait for the right conditions to germinate. Some, like sunflowers, pigweed and ragweed, seem to have missed their time. Those that emerged early were about a foot high when the rains began. They’re not much taller now, but are blooming. Toward the village, where there’s been more moisture from the ditches and river, plants are their usual selves, tall and in full bloom.

Russian thistles aren’t so easily discouraged. There were few during the summer and they too only got about a foot high before turning spiny. Since the rain, in openings here and there, dense grass is about half an inch high. Much is young cheat grass; the rest will soon push up single spears that reveal their true identity.

Goat’s heads apparently have been taking advantage of the lack of competition from overshadowing weeds. Where bright green pairs of smooth-edged, oval leaves have sprung up, the ones nearest the road are putting out plump red stems with eight tiny leaflets. The existing plants have already expanded their territory. The other seedlings still could be next year’s white sweet clover or this year’s áñil del muerto: the one has already peaked for this season, the other is still scarce.

Earlier bindweed grew luxuriantly in abandoned vegetable gardens and corn fields when the usual pigweed and Russian thistles didn’t appear. By the time the rains came, they’d already exhausted themselves. Those that weren’t cleared by the vigilant had disappeared with the unrelenting heat and dryness, leaving the usual ones blooming along the road.

The related ivy-leaved morning glories are now sprouting in the wash, while an occasional scarlet creeper is finally opening in the village. However, while toothed spurge has been up for a few weeks, it’s no where dense as usual. Purslane and clammy weed simply haven’t appeared.

The dry river beds are very different - nothing is growing. The waters rushed through with such force two weekends ago they washed everything away. The near arroyo, where Russian thistles had colonized the bases of the newly reinforced walls, is now bare. The bottom, leveled by heavy equipment and the wind, has been resculpted.

In the far arroyo, the carpet of leaves and dead plant debris that had collected under the tamarix are gone. The grasses and small chamisas are prostrate, pasted by mud. The only green leaves are on short plants hiding under the protection of the largest chamisas whose roots can resist the compulsive force of passing floods.

The waters reached both sides, with mud still caked several inches up the western bank. On the east, it was strong enough to undercut the base and collapse the wall in places. Some scurf peas are hanging by their white roots.

Downstream on the flood plain, cream tips had earlier become raised islands when the wind dislodged sand around their lower stems. Now, one that had grown near the edge of the active bottom is held prone by a thick, exposed root. The water removed the protecting inch high bank.

In between, the prairie hasn’t changed much. Some grama grass, probably blue grama, is putting up new sprouts, but needle grass is responding slowly. In my yard, where I started watering the native grasses a few weeks ago, the black grama and needle grass are turning green, but in the areas left to nature, things are still brown. Either the messages from the sun angles or the continuing alternations of moisture and evaporation are signaling restraint.

In places where forbs do exist, usually closer to the arroyo bank or the ranch road, some that went dormant are coming back, the strap-leafed asters here, a stickleaf there. The golden hairy asters, which have been blooming everywhere for weeks, are still low clumps crouched within the cages of last year’s dead stems.

The blue gilia has had one of the toughest years. The low growing shrub usually is covered with five-petaled flowers from the end of April until mid-June. Last year, two large plants were living near the base of the deep road cut just north of the arroyo. Smaller plants bloomed in a small waterway leading to an arroyo feeder to the west of the shaded parents.

This year, the smaller plants began blooming in mid-April, but I almost never saw their flowers fully open. When they did unfurl, it seemed to be just before ten in the morning. I never saw flowers on the two larger plants, just lantern-shaped buds and greyish spent blooms.

The Polemoniaceae that most resembles mossy phlox is native to the dry southwest. It’s found from Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma down through Arizona, New Mexico and Texas into Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo León.

Taxonomists can’t agree if blue bowls should be called Gilia rigidula or Giliastrum rigidulum ssp. acerosum, but do agree the genus emerged early, probably in Texas or northern Mexico when the climate was drying in the mid-tertiary period and swamps were giving way to grasslands. Leon Stuchlik believes our plants represent “the most primitive species in the genus,” with pollen very similar to its supposed Loeselia ancestor.

The response of the herbaceous perennial to cyclic droughts is to reduce its activity, to stop blooming when moisture disappears in June and maintain its fading, needle tipped leaves until the monsoons. Last year, a few brightened the end of July and bloomed the first week in August. Their leaves stayed green until temperatures fell into the low 20's last November, then fell away leaving twiggy skeletons that faded from red to white by mid December.

The central stem, with its main limbs that branch into a dense ground cover, rises from a reddish taproot that doesn’t penetrate particularly deeply into the soil. The normal equilibrium that’s maintained between the fleshy root and hairy, glandular leaves was challenged by this year’s prolonged drought. The leaves turned brown by August.

When rain finally trickled down the slopes of the road cut, the roots revived and in the past weeks new growth has developed. In the spring this happens about a month before the funnel shaped flowers appear with white-rimmed yellow centers and yellow stamens.

The color of those petals is the rich jewel shade painters seek to paint the virgin Mary’s cloak. It’s a hue more likely found here than in the lowlands. Muriel Wheldale Onslow found the purple anthocyanin pigment needs alkaline sap to turn blue, and the higher the altitude, the more intense the color. She said drought and heat also increase production of the pigment, which may be why the flowers are darkest in June, just before the summer hiatus.

Notes:
Grant, Verne. “Classification of the Genus Gilia (Polemoniaceae),” Phytologia 84:69-86:1998.

Onslow, Muriel Wheldale. The Anthocyanin Pigments of Plants, 1916.

Stuchlik, L. “Pollen Morphology and Taxonomy of the Family Polemoniaceae,” Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 4:325-333:1967.

Photograph: New blue gilia leaves on the bank of the ranch road near the arroyo, 28 August 2011.