Sunday, September 28, 2014

Red Amaranth Seeds


Weather: Rain Monday night; last rain 9/22.

What’s blooming in the area: Silver lace vine, datura, morning glories, bouncing Bess, sweet pea, Russian sage, red amaranth, zinnias from new seeds and reseeds, African marigolds from seed, Maximilian sunflowers, pampas grass.

Beyond the walls and fences: Pink and white bindweed, goat’s head, stickleaf, leatherleaf globemallow, Queen Anne’s lace, pigweed, ragweed, chamisa, Hopi tea, snakeweed broom, broom senecio, native sunflowers, goldenrod, áñil del muerto, golden hairy, heath and purple asters.

In my yard, looking east: Large-flowered soapwort, hollyhocks, winecup mallow.

Looking south: Betty Prior and floribunda roses.

Looking west: Catmint, calamintha, David phlox.

Looking north: Yellow potentilla, hosta, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, chocolate flower, blanket flower, anthemis, coreopsis, chrysanthemum.

In the open, along the drive: Buddleia, white yarrow.

Bedding plants: Blue salvia, French marigold.

Seeds: Larkspur, reseeded Sensation cosmos from last year’s plants, yellow cosmos.

Animal sightings: Geckos, small birds, bees, grasshoppers, hornets, large and small black ants.


Weekly update: Whenever I hear people argue there’s no such thing as species alteration, I think how isolated we’ve grown from our agrarian past when peoples’ lives depended on observing plants.

For years anthropologists believed farming had been invented one time in the middle east about ten thousand year ago. They assumed the activity was too complex to have been created more than once. They, of course, were thinking of farming as they knew it, not as it had been.

In 1961, Richard MacNeish reported evidence for separate invention in the Tehuacán valley southeast of Puebla, México. In the Coxcatlán rock shelter his team found seeds for moschata squash and amaranth in strata dating between 4700 and 4300 bc. The National Research Council has identified the last as a form of Amaranthus cruentus.


The red-leaved plant was not native to the area. The dark-seeded annuals descended from Amaranthus hybrida in what is now Guatemala and southern México. The seeds found ready for threshing in Coxcatlán had been selected for their light color.

Given an opportunity, the wind-pollinated cruentus interbreeds with its neighbors. In Guatemala, it mates with its parent hybrida. In México, the plants cross with the local grain amaranth, Amaranth hypochondriacus.

Two thousand years later, a Franciscan friar, Bernardino de Sahagún, recorded the plants important to the Aztecs. He himself probably knew little about farming - he was from a family wealthy enough to send him to the royal university at Salamanca. He transcribed what his informants said without obvious editorial revision.


In the 1570s, natives of the Mexican valley distinguished the types of amaranth in their area by their seeds. Bird amaranth had a white seed. Another had seeds that were red or black. The mirror stone amaranth had glistening black seeds, while those of the one now identified as hypochondriacus were described as becoming like "coarse sand."

The last was the one used to make the blood and dough figures that were distributed during festivals honoring Huitzilopochtli. The Spanish were so horrified by what they saw as a mockery of the Eucharist that they suppressed both the festival and the grain. Soldiers aren’t trained to discriminate between types. They destroyed all cultivated amaranths.

Cruentus survived as a crop in Oaxaca and Guatemala. In 1947, Jonathan Sauer found both dark- and light-seeded varieties. The later were preferred for tortillas, and used "in various other ways, much like maize." The dark seeds were used only for tortillas.


In the late nineteenth century, Jesse Walter Fewkes reported a red-topped amaranth was being used by the Hopi to dye the red flat bread used in kachina rituals. Alfred Whiting said they still were growing red-leaved amaranths in irrigated, raised beds in the 1930s.

Matilda Coxe Stevenson saw Zuñi women tending the annuals in small gardens around their villages in the 1890s. Like the neighboring Hopi, they used it to dye the thin wafer bread used in ceremonies.

The anthropologists didn’t note the seed color. Sauer says morphological features indicate the southwestern red amaranth is a dark-seeded strain of cruentus created by selection.


Selecting seed is time consuming. After World War II, mass marketing made it easy to buy packaged seeds. Then, economies of scale made it less expensive to buy finished products that seeds.

When Sauer returned to Guatemala in 1967, red amaranth no longer was treated as a crop. He still saw plants growing on the edges of milpas and in dooryard gardens. But, they were naturalized plants with dark seeds. No one had kept light-colored ones.


In the 1960s, he says the Hopi were substituting commercial food coloring for ko’mo. The Zuñi no longer were bothering to select the best l’shilowa yäl’tok a seeds. They used reseeded plants that had interbred with a local green amaranth species, Powellii.

As the plants growing in the Española valley this summer show, when plants are neglected, species that have been selected can degenerate. It takes human effort to keep some strains pure. Thousands of years aren’t enough time to stabilize them.


Notes:
Fewkes, J. Walter. "A Contribution to Ethnobotany," American Anthropologist 9:14-21:1896.

MacNeish, Richard Stockton. Tehuacán Archaeological-Botanical Project, Annual Report, 1961. More on his work appears in the post for 21 February 2010.

_____. The Prehistory of the Tehuacán Valley, volume 5, 1972.

National Research Council. Amaranth: Modern Prospects for an Ancient Crop, 1984, edited by F. R. Ruskin.

Sahagún, Bernardino de. Historia Universal de las Cosas de Nueva España, c.1577, translated as Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Book XI - Earthly Things by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson, 1963.

Sauer, Jonathan D. "Amaranths as Dye Plants among the Pueblo Indians," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 6:412-415:1950.

_____. "The Grain Amaranths and Their Relatives: A Revised Taxonomic and Geographic Survey," Missouri Botanical Garden, Annals 54:103-137:1967.

Stevenson, Matilda Coxe. Ethnobotany of the Zuñi Indians (1915).

Whiting, Alfred F. Ethnobotany of the Hopi (1939).


Photographs:
1. Red amaranth growing near village, 17 August 2012.

2. This year’s offspring of #1, same location, 4 September 2014.

3. Red amaranth seed, purchased from Native Seeds/Search. It appears black when it comes from the package.

4. Unidentified amaranth in Florentine Codex, illustration 963, after Francisco del Paso y Troncoso. His version of the codex was published in three volumes in 1906 and 1907.

5. Red amaranth seed, purchased from Horizon Seeds. One seed is redder than the others. All Sauer and others say is light and dark, but not how light or dark.

6. Red amaranth seed, purchased from All Good Things Organic. The lighter colored seed looks like an unviable one that won’t sprout if its planted.

7. Local green amaranth in my yard, 13 August 2012. The earliest leaves and the stems are reddish.

8. Reseeds from #1, growing behind the 2012 plants; 4 September 2014.

9. Reseeds from #1, growing across drive from 2012 plants; 4 September 2014. Differences in height probably are due to differences in runoff from the road.


10. Red amaranth seeds, purchased from Seeds of Change. Similarities between seeds from different vendors may be inherent in the species, or may be because many seed companies purchase their stock from the same wholesale source.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Hurricanes


Weather: Remnants of hurricane Odile were diverted; instead of water we got cold temperatures Thursday morning; last rain 9/5.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, datura, morning glories, bouncing Bess, sweet pea, Russian sage, zinnias from new seeds and reseeds, African marigolds from seed, Maximilian and cultivated sunflowers, pampas grass. Pyracantha berries turned orange.

One man reaped his hay this week in four stages. He first drove through to cut stalks. Next he threw the mown stalks into heaped rows. After they dried, he baled them. Finally, three men picked up the bales. One drove the tractor. A second walked beside the flat-bed trailer and handed the bales to the third who stacked them on the trailer floor.

Beyond the walls and fences: Pink and white bindweed, goat’s head, stickleaf, leatherleaf globemallow, pigweed, ragweed, Hopi tea, snakeweed broom, broom senecio, native sunflowers, goldenrod, plains paper flowers, áñil del muerto, tahoka daisy, golden hairy, heath and purple asters.


In my yard, looking east: Large-flowered soapwort, garlic chives, Jupiter’s beard, hollyhocks, winecup mallow.

Looking south: Betty Prior and floribunda roses.

Looking west: Catmint, calamintha, David phlox, purple coneflower.

Looking north: Yellow potentilla, hosta, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, chocolate flower, blanket flower, anthemis, coreopsis, chrysanthemum.

In the open, along the drive: Buddleia, white yarrow.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, blue salvia, moss rose, French marigold.

Seeds: Larkspur, reseeded Sensation cosmos from last year’s plants, yellow cosmos.

Animal sightings: Ground squirrel, geckos, other small birds, bees, grasshoppers, hornets, large and small black ants.

I’ve been cleaning house and finding more than the usual numbers of spider webs. I’ve also found more species than the familiar daddy long-legs. I blamed my negligence for the arachnid diversification until I talked with a friend in Santa Fé. He said he had more spiders his year than usual and more varieties. He attributed them to the warm winter and wet summer.


Weekly update: It’s a commonplace to say what you learn is defined by the questions you ask.

This week I’ve been trying to identify how red amaranth moved from southern México to the Hopi in northeastern Arizona.

Jonathan Sauer reviewed the available literature in 1950. He found only one possible reference: "In the state of Guerrero in Mexico, immature amaranth inflorescences are ground on a metate and the resulting bright red paste is used to color maize dough."

My ignorance of Mexican history and geography is profound. I didn’t know Guerrero lies on the Pacific northwest of Oaxaca or that Acapulco is its main city. My knowledge of Acapulco was limited to celebrity news stories. However, I did notice its location on the southern end of the Mexican land mass coincided with an area where tropical storms have been forming this summer.


For the past several years I’ve been trying to discover where our rain comes from. Last year I realized humidity levels didn’t matter if the moisture was being pulled from local streams, soils and plants. Many rain showers were simply recycling our existing water as the weather was slowly moving it elsewhere.

I thought hurricanes might be the source for the moisture that fueled monsoons. I had a vague sense we sometimes got rain when a tropical storm moved near the mouth of the Río Grande in the Carribean. When I looked at the National Hurricane Center’s website I discovered there are more storms than those in the Atlantic that threaten US cities.

NHC has a separate map for hurricanes in the eastern Pacific. Most of the disturbances this summer originated along Mexico’s western coast between Acapulco and Puerto Vallarta, some a bit farther south, some to the west in the ocean.


I also learned Acapulco had been the port for Spanish trade with the Orient that went through Manilla. It took advantage of the western trade winds used by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521. Later, in 1565, Alonso de Arellano and Andrés de Urdaneta discovered, to get home, sailors had to sail north to reach the east bound westerlies at 38 degrees north off Japan.

I was aware of the two wind streams in the Atlantic. The trade winds are the ones sailing ships used in the triangular trade that moved slaves from Africa to the Carribean. Then ships moved north along the US coast dropping off slaves and picking up cargoes until they reached New England. They returned to England on the westerlies with raw materials sold in the ports of Bristol and London for cash needed to fund the next slave trip.


Arellano and Urdaneta reasoned winds must behave the same in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. North and south have the same patterns. The equator runs between with no winds. Sailors call the dead area the doldrums. Scientists term it the Intertropical Convergence Zone.

Hurricane formation is a function on the earth’s movements around the sun. After the solstice, the ocean waters heat enough for storms to form. Rotation isn’t possible near the equator, because it doesn’t spin fast enough. The southern boundary for hurricane formation is 310 miles north of the equator. Acapulco is 1,166 miles distant.

The northern boundary for very warm water is the Tropic of Cancer. The northernmost point that has the sun directly overhead on the solstice lies at the 23.5 latitude. Canton, which became the primary export center for China, is at 23 degrees north.


There are, of course, other factor contributing to hurricane formation, but this was enough to explain how hurricanes affect our weather. The Hopi know monsoons come from the southwest, the direction associated with blue corn.

Whether or not the water that moves up through the Gulf of California reaches the Española valley is determined by other wind forces from the north and east which redirect its course. Christina arrived in mid June, Douglas in early July, Marie in late August. Last week the remnants of Norbert were deflected by winds from the east. They flooded Phoenix and Las Vegas when they dumped their water in Arizona and Nevada. This Thursday Odile stayed to the south as cold air moved in from Colorado.


The potential for destructive storms between the solstice and the equinox is the main reason sailing ships using the trade winds could only make the round trip once a year. Winter conditions were the other.

Acapulco, as the port for the Spanish trade with China, would have had good roads to Mexico City. Once communications existed between the two areas, more than trade goods would have moved northeast from Guerrero, even after the Spanish trade ended in 1815. Anything in the market stalls of the capital could move north to the Hopi.


It’s unknown if anything did. I’ve not been able to read Sauer’s original source. Pedro Hendrichs’ book is out of print, but not out of copyright. Google confirmed the words metate, maize and alegría appear on the page cited by Sauer, but wouldn’t let me see them.

Hendrichs identified alegría elsewhere as Amaranthus paniculatus var esp Leucocarpus, a synonym for the Hopi’s Amaranthus cruentus that grew in nearby Oaxaca. The word alegría is more commonly used in México for the Amaranthus hypochondriacus used by the Aztec for ceremonial dough figures. Hendrichs also said "In ancient times, the Indians made idols of the little" paniculatus seeds they offered to the gods. They ate "them after finishing the ceremony."

It’s not obvious Hendrichs identified the plant correctly. He was not a botanist, but the son of a German hardware salesman who sent him to México before World War I to expand his markets. He returned after the war to write ethnographic studies.

This book was about the Río Balsas that flows through Guerrero to empty into the Pacific at Lázaro Cárdenas, some 200 miles north of Acapulco in Michoacán. The 479-mile-long river could have been a separate conduit for seeds to follow to reach Mexico City.


It’s well known that discoveries, whether by the Hopi, sailors or me, involve more than asking the right questions. It also helps to be open to serendipitous happenings. Or, as scientists say one forms hypothesis, but must pay attention to anomalies.

Notes: Much of my information is from Wikipedia.

Hendrichs Pérez, Pedro Rodolfo. Por Tierras Ignotas, volume 1, 1945.

Sauer, Jonathan D. "Amaranths as Dye Plants among the Pueblo Indians," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 6:412-415:1950.


Photographs: The daily cloud cycle echoes the effects of the sun’s heat that form hurricanes.  Clouds on Friday, the day after Odile failed to arrive. All were taken looking southwest between two lilacs toward the Jémez in the general area between Los Alamos and Puye Cliffs.

1. 6:30 am. Clouds from night revealed at dawn.

2. 7:29 am. Sun rising, picking out the lime layers in the badlands; clouds dissipating

3. 7:47 am. Night clouds nearly gone.

4. 8:58 am. First clouds of new day are small, isolated puffs of white.

5. 10:01 am. Clouds joined in bands above the Jémez, with new clouds rising behind. Density of lime is fading in the badlands.

6. 10:29 am. Clouds in a denser band with some patterns to them.

7. 12:37 pm. Clouds reaching their densest state. They stay the same until late afternoon.

8. 4:44 pm. Clouds begin moving higher, streaming out overhead.

9. 6:11 pm. Clouds thinning at the south end of the Jémez and developing more to the north.

10. 6:40 pm. Winds developing, clouds thinning.

11. 7:11 pm. Few clouds left as sundown approaches.


12. 7:40 pm. No clouds left.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Produce Stands


Weather: Promised rain did not arrive; apparently cold air in the east stopped its advance. Last rain 9/5.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, rose of Sharon, datura, morning glories, bouncing Bess, sweet pea, Russian sage, zinnias from new seeds and reseeds, cultivated sunflowers.

Beyond the walls and fences: Pink and white bindweed, goat’s head, stickleaf, leatherleaf globemallow, yellow mullein, pigweed, ragweed, Hopi tea, snakeweed broom, broom senecio, native sunflowers, goldenrod, plains paper flowers, áñil del muerto, tahoka daisy, golden hairy and heath asters.

In my yard, looking east: Large-flowered soapwort, garlic chives, Jupiter’s beard, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, Maximilian sunflower.

Looking south: Betty Prior, Fairy, rugosa and miniature roses.

Looking west: Caryopteris, catmint, calamintha, David phlox, ladybells, Mönch aster, purple coneflower.

Looking north: Yellow potentilla, hosta, golden spur columbine, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, chocolate flower, blanket flower, anthemis, coreopsis, chrysanthemum.

In the open, along the drive: Buddleia, white yarrow.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, blue salvia, moss rose, gazania.

Seeds: Larkspur, reseeded Sensation cosmos from last year’s plants, yellow cosmos.

Animal sightings: Geckos, humming birds, other small birds, bees, cabbage butterfly, grasshoppers, large and small black ants.


Weekly update: Last week one of the local produce stands had signs advertising peaches and yellow chicos.

I couldn’t find the signs this week, but when I went looking I discovered the produce stands have changed since I moved here in 1991.


The largest, Arlo’s Produce, was closed. Its owner, Arlo Martinez, died in 2009 at age 52. His family has deep roots in La Puebla, but probably no members were interested in continuing the business.

Another of the older stands is still operating with long tables under a metal roof. It may have been the one with chicos. This week it had a small sign advertising squash and displayed strings of drying red chiles. Bushel baskets of green ones were under the tables.


Perhaps these permanent stands no longer can compete with farmers’ markets. I always had the impression many of their customers were people driving north. The market in Santa Fé is closer, and guarantees its produce with a jury that determines who may sell. The fees for a vendor are high. $100 a year plus $25 for each week and a valid city business license.

Farmers’ markets forbid reselling products, which Arlo’s had done. He was a carpenter by trade. His mother’s sister, Rita, was the cook at La Cocina. His late brother, Zacarias, a jack-of-all trades. They were not farmers.

Martinez bought his produce from growers and wholesalers. Boxes often were piled beneath the yellow truck emblazoned with his name and two red peppers. A story in a 2003 issue of Sunset listed his fall produce as green chiles, potatoes, dried beans, sweet piñon brittle, honey, squash and apples. Only the last three could have been local, and the apples probably were from Velarde.


The alternative has always been roadside vendors. These generally are pickup trucks offering piñon seeds or Rocky Ford melons. Fire wood is often available. This week someone was selling hay.

I talked with a man in 2012 who bought potatoes in Colorado for resale. He rotated between locations here and in Santa Fé.

He was professional pedlar, I think originally from a farm. He’d worked odd jobs his whole life. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he spent many nights in his truck. But, when he had a good day I got the impression he spent his evening in a place with people like himself interested in relaxing together.


He and the other resellers serve a useful purpose. Local grocery stores have raw fruit and vegetable sections, but their produce is rarely fresh. The pedlars provide a link between people tired of potatoes that have sprouted inside and farmers too remote to use local outlets.

Trade links between Colorado and the Española valley were exploited by the Rio Grande railroad, and strengthened when cars became available. In the depression, when Martinez’s parents were young, Puebla had a poor irrigation ditch. Families were beginning to lose their land to the Bonds because they couldn’t pay the tax accessed for the irrigation dam. Men grew wheat for food, corn for their animals and themselves, and peppers for cash. They sold their surpluses in Santa Fé and the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado.

Colorado closed its borders to non-resident farm workers in 1936. The legislature passed laws that required truckers to have state licenses and pay a per ton fee on whatever they carried. They eliminated traditional trade with New Mexico.

Rio Arriba County did not reciprocate. Older marketing patterns were maintained by men like Martinez. At most, police and landowners harass venders today.


Now there are men with a little more capital than the pedlars. They set up small tables under patio umbrellas or frame canopies. There usually are two vehicles parked at the stands; at least one is a pickup. I suspect the teams of men sell a combination of their own produce, produce from neighbors and goods purchased in the south. They’re more like the village entrepreneurs familiar to newer residents in the valley than farmers.

I saw three this week. None had signs listing what it offered, though one had a sign announcing its name.


One was probably selling sweet corn. Several times, the men had corn stalks tied to their frame posts. Another had bags of peppers hanging from the canopy frame, bottles of honey, and packaged goods on the table. The third had large melon samples and half-peck baskets of green peppers on their table.

These men cater to local workers. They’re never set up before two in the afternoon.

When I worked in Los Alamos, the local farmer’s market was closed hours before the end of the day shift at the laboratory. The only people who could shop were those without jobs - retirees and housewives - or those who could leave their offices for some time without penalty.

The one time I tried the Española market, most of the vendors were gone by the time I got there after work. They had sold out. Soon after its site near the old post office was coopted. It’s reopened on a side road.


The main farmers’ market in Santa Fé closes at noon on Saturdays and 1 pm on Tuesdays, with parking fees. The organization does sponsor an afternoon market at one of the malls on Tuesday.

These little weekday stands are open on the main arteries when women who work as maids or cleaners are getting home. They’re still open when men, even construction workers, are driving though.

They’d all left by Saturday, perhaps to return to their families, perhaps to find more stock. The one with melons only had peppers left on Wednesday.


Instead on teams of men, women were sitting behind tables on Saturday. Their husbands hovered in the background. They may be people who work during the week and maintain market gardens on weekends.

One, selling tomatoes and green peppers, had a sign saying Velarde. Another, selling green squash had no sign.

On Sunday (today), the women were gone, and some of the men were back. The one with melons returned with green apples, green peppers, and sweet corn. The wooden roadside stand was closed.

Notes:
Calkins, Hugh G. "Handling of a Cash Crop (Chili)," USDA Soil Conservation Bulletin, 1937, reprinted in Marta Weigle, Hispanic Villages of Northern New Mexico, 1975. Discusses the effects of Colorado law on local farmers. Villages also contains the Tewa Basin Study, 1935, with says people in Puebla relied on chicos when they had a good corn crop. It was described as white corn that was "boiled, then dried."

Cobos, Rubén. A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish, 1983. He says chicos is "specially prepared dehydrated corn used in flavoring beans, pork and other dishes."

Niederman, Sharon. "Taos Harvest Drive: Sample New Mexico's Autumn Bounty," Sunset, October 2003. She used the word chilis.


Photographs:
1. Weekday produce stand, Chama Highway, 5 September 2014. Angostura is a settlement northwest of Española on the Río Chama noted for its fertile land.

2. Saturday produce stand, Chama Highway, 13 September 2014. It had a sign on the ground saying Velarde. The village at the end of the Española valley on the road to Taos is noted for its fruits.  Faces have been obscured.

3. Remains of Arlo’s Produce, Riverside Drive, 12 September 2014. His truck (below) usually was parked on the left side.


4. Sun Valley Produce, Riverside Drive, 12 September 2014. The box of yellow squash is under the table.

5. Potato vender, Riverside Drive, 12 September 2014. This is not the same person discussed above.

6. Weekday produce stand, Riverside Drive, 7 September 2014.

7. Sign in place pedlars gather, Riverside Drive, 11 September 2014. You could buy blue-nosed pit bull puppies there Saturday.

8. Corn stalks on stand in #1, 10 September 2014.


9. Weekday produce stand, Riverside Drive, 8 September 2014. Green peppers in hanging bag.

10. Saturday produce stand, Griego Bridge Road near Riverside, 13 September 2014.

Sunday, September 07, 2014

Red Amaranth


Weather: Hurricane Norbert off the southwest of Baja brought rain Friday.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, rose of Sharon, datura, morning glories, bouncing Bess, purple garden phlox, sweet pea, Russian sage, zinnias from new seeds and reseeds, cultivated sunflowers.

Beyond the walls and fences: Yellow evening primrose, purple mat flower, pink and white bindweed, goat’s head, stickleaf, leatherleaf globemallow, pigweed, ragweed, horseweed, Hopi tea, snakeweed broom, broom senecio, native sunflowers, goldenrod, plains paper flowers, áñil del muerto, tahoka daisy, golden hairy asters, black and side oats grama grasses.

In my yard, looking east: Large-flowered soapwort, garlic chives, Jupiter’s beard, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, cut leaf coneflower, Maximilian sunflower heads beginning to bend from weight of seeds.

Looking south: Betty Prior, Fairy, rugosa and miniature roses.

Looking west: Caryopteris, catmint, calamintha, David phlox, ladybells, Mönch aster, purple coneflower.

Looking north: Yellow potentilla, hosta, golden spur columbine, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, chocolate flower, blanket flower, anthemis, coreopsis.

In the open, along the drive: Buddleia, white yarrow.

Bedding plants: Snapdragon, sweet alyssum, blue salvia, moss rose, gazania.

Seeds: Larkspur, reseeded Sensation cosmos from last year’s plants, yellow cosmos.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, geckos, small birds, bees, grasshoppers, large and small black ants.


Weekly update: Some mysteries are never solved.

A few years ago a woman down the road planted some bulbs that erupted after the monsoons came in July of 2010. They reached four feet by the first of August with maroon, begonia-like leaves. I thought she’d ordered something from some mass market catalog that featured South African novelties.


The next year, someone two miles away planted something with similar red leaves between rows of African marigolds in a cutting garden. By the end of September I decided the red heads must be some type of giant celosia instead.


The celosia I know, the plumed variety of Amaranthus argentea sold as a bedding plant, might get a foot high. These were six-feet tall, with spikes like Amaranthus caudatus. However, they didn’t have the hanging habit of love-lies-bleeding.

This year I decided the burgundy-leaved, maroon-flowered giants were a form of the red amaranth grown by the Hopi and Zuñi. They extract a beet-like pigment from the plumes to dye the thin wafer bread distributed by kachina dancers.

The real mystery isn’t the identity of the plant, but how Amaranthus cruentus got into Española area gardens in 2011.

When I was in Santa Fé this week I saw them growing in two yards. I’m told one of the gardeners had purchased it as bedding plant from Agua Fria Nursery in 2012. It naturalized and since has come back from its own seeds.

The seeds themselves are not offered by Lake Valley, the company whose seed is most available here and in Santa Fé. One has to order packets from some small company that specializes in native or heritage plants.

One such company, Seeds of Change, has offered Amaranthus cruentus x Amaranthus powelli as the Hopi Dye Plant. The company was founded in 1989 in Gila, New Mexico, by Gabriel Howearth. The research farm was moved to El Guique, northwest of Española on the road to Ojo Caliente in 1996.

The following year, the company was bought by Mars, Inc. The corporate owner closed local operations in 2010 amid chaos that could have scattered inventories. Employees were abruptly dismissed. Seed crops were abandoned. Headquarters originally were in Santa Fé. They’re now located in Rancho Dominguez, California.

The people with the cutting garden might buy plants from Agua Fria. They maintain their yard and put bedding plants in a whiskey half barrel laid on its side. However, they usually grow petunias that are available everywhere.

It’s more likely they planted seeds. The companion African marigolds usually are grown that way. I wondered for a while if they were cropping the amaranth, perhaps drying the heads and selling them in the Santa Fé farmers’ market as everlastings. They could also have been harvesting the grain or leaves for sale to gourmet cooks.

However, they seem to leave the plants to be killed by the frost. It takes three to five months for the seeds to mature after plants die.


I saw red-topped plants in three other places last year. All were in yards of single-wides in settled locations, not mobile home parks. The one also has a few rose bushes, perhaps selected from the ones imported in mass by the local hardware. Another has morning glories grown from seeds and iris that may have been passed along. While all three trailer dwellers appreciate flowers, none look like they would frequent stores that sold unusual annuals or seeds.


It’s possible one person’s plants came from a neighbor who bought bedding plants or whose ATV, snowmobile or hauling trailer tires picked up seeds around El Guique. Those plants could have gone to seed over the fence. Individuals then might have traded seedlings among themselves last year. Friendship and kinship ties spread over miles in the valley.

No one seems to have planted the amaranth this year. Instead the plants look like they reseeded in dense patches. One even came up on the shoulder opposite one of the trailers.


The cutting garden still has its plants in rows, but it looks like someone may have dug the furrows after the plants emerged. Everywhere, this year, the plants are variable heights and colors.


As for the first plant that had red leaves and plumes, the woman continued to plant it for several years, then stopped. I still have no idea what it was.

[I have since been told this is the castor bean plant, Ricinus communis. It’s in the spurge family.]

Photographs:
1. Red amaranth head, trailer on south side of village, 17 August 2012.

2. Red amaranth plants growing outside fence by road to post office, 5 September 2014. The plant grew here last year, and apparently reseeded. I would guess the sprouts inside the fence were weeded out, but the ones outside left to fend for themselves. With irregular watering, they became deep red and short.

3. Unknown red-leaved plant growing on the main road, 11 September 2010.

4. Red amaranth growing in rows with African marigolds, double-wide on north side of village, 12 October 2013.

5. Plants in the cutting garden shown in #4 killed by frost, 26 November 2011.

6. Morning glories blooming with plants in #1, 17 August 2012.

7. Plant growing on shoulder across the road from south trailer, 4 September 2014.

8. Cutting garden plants from #4 growing this year, 4 September 2014.


9. The red-leaved plants that first piqued my interest, 11 September 2010; same as #3. The fence is about three-feet high.

Tuesday, September 02, 2014

Fields of Flowers


Weather: Weekend rain dropped water from hurricane Marie off the west coast of México; it coincided with a storm center off the south coast of Louisiana.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, rose of Sharon, datura, rose purple morning glory, bouncing Bess, purple garden phlox, sweet pea, Russian sage, zinnias from seeds, cultivated sunflowers.

Beyond the walls and fences: Velvetweed, yellow evening primrose, purple mat flower, pink and white bindweed, Queen Anne’s lace, goat’s head, stickleaf, leatherleaf globemallow, pigweed, ragweed, horseweed, wild lettuce, Hopi tea, golden rod, plains paper flowers, áñil del muerto, tahoka daisy, golden hairy asters, black and side oats grama grasses.

In my yard, looking east: Large-flowered soapwort, garlic chives, Jupiter’s beard, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, Maximilian sunflowers, cut leaf coneflower.

Looking south: Betty Prior, Fairy, rugosa and miniature roses.

Looking west: Caryopteris, Johnson’s Blue geranium, catmint, calamintha, David phlox, ladybells, Mönch aster, purple coneflower.

Looking north: Yellow potentilla, hosta, golden spur columbine, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, chocolate flower, blanket flower, anthemis, coreopsis.

In the open, along the drive: Buddleia, white yarrow.

Bedding plants: Snapdragon, sweet alyssum, blue salvia, moss rose, gazania.

Seeds: Heavenly Blue morning glories, larkspur, reseeded Sensation cosmos from last year’s plants, yellow cosmos, bachelor buttons.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, squirrel, geckos, small birds, bees, grasshoppers, large and small black ants.


Weekly update: Fields of flowers appear in advertisements and movie backgrounds. They’re less common in real life.

The only time you usually see a field of flowers here is late summer when the yellow-flowered áñil del muerto bloom.

This year is different. Fields are covered with Tahoka daisies that resemble heather from a distance. The lavender flowers rise in waves across fields that usually sprout prickly pear or Russian thistles this time of year.


I wonder where all that seed came from. We had a lot of wind this spring which would have redistributed the parachuted seed, but I’ve never seen the plants growing densely anywhere in the area. I’ve seen no reports of the composite’s seed lasting in the soil.

Perhaps this year’s inflorescence may be attributed to the early monsoon which dumped water in the middle of July, when the sun’s rays were strong. The one’s growing downhill from irrigation canals may have gotten extra water when ditches overflowed the night it rained so long.

It may be the relatively constant moisture since has nourished seedlings. Rains have come every couple of weeks, not the usual couple of months.

It also may be the result of last fall’s heavy rains when plants were going to seed that produced the seed for this year’s flowers.


One other plant is enjoying a similar blooming period this year, but in more limited conditions. Stickleafs cover the area near one of the arroyos. There the flowers dominate the wettest area, the ones in the flood plain. Away from that area, the white flowers merge with those of Tahoka daisies and paper flowers. Along the road, golden hairy asters replace the paper flowers.


They’re in the same field, but they don’t bloom at the same time. The lavender petals of Machaeranthera tanacetifolia are closed in the early morning, but open wide in late morning to show their yellow centers. At that time, the white petals of Mentzelia nuda are shut. They only open late in the day.


Scattered flowers appear on Tahoka daisies in mid-summer. This time of year, plants may be covered with flowers. Members of the Laosa family only open a few flowers at a time. Even in late day, the mass of gray-leaved, two-foot high plants resembles a light-colored field of grass or clover.


It’s possible these plants have flowered like this before. When you work, you only see things during commuting times. Early morning and late afternoon are not the best hours to see Tahoka daisies.

One thing I do know. They’ve never grown in the dry area of my yard before. That I would have noticed.


Photographs:

1. Tahoka daisies in field on main road, 29 August 2014. Trees line the main acequia at back.

2. Áñil del muerto in field on farm road, 31 August 2014. Tree in back is probably on a lateral.

3. Tahoka daisies in another field on main road, 29 August 2014.

4. Tahoka daisies in my yard, last fall, 15 October 2013.

5. Stickleaf blooming in field near an arroyo, 31 August 2014.

6. Fully open tahoka daisy and partly open stickleaf near arroyo, 31 August 2014; plains prairie flowers are in back.

7. Tahoka daisies blooming with winterfat on dry hill in my yard, 29 August 2014.


8. Plains paper flower blooming, 31 August 2014. They also are having a good year. The line the banks of the road, but only in this one area near the arroyo.