Known Unknowns

Weather: Real rain yesterday, with a bit of hail; 14:03 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming in the area: Wild pink, Persian yellow, Dr. Huey and other hybrid roses, pyracantha, snowball, purple flowered locust, silver lace vine, bearded iris, yuccas, red hot poker, peony, datura, donkey tail spurge, blue perennial salvia; buds on oriental poppy, sweet pea.

Beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, tamarix, yuccas, fernleaf globemallow, western stickseed, bractless and tawny cryptanthas, alfilerillo, hoary cress, tumble and purple mustards, purple mat flower, gypsum phacelia, tufted white evening primrose, scarlet bee blossom, blue gilia, bindweed, oxalis, wild licorice, scurf and bush peas, golden smoke, pale trumpets, Indian paintbrush near a chamisa, woolly plantain, flea bane, plain’s paper flower, goat’s beard, cream tips, common and native dandelion; needle, rice, June and cheat grasses; buds on three awn grass; berries formed on juniper.

In my yard: Black locust, rugosa roses, spirea, beauty bush, skunk bush, baby blue iris, Bath pinks, snow-in-summer, small leaved soapwort, Jupiter’s beard, coral bells, golden spur columbine, vinca, yellow alyssum, blue flax, pink evening primrose, chocolate flower; buds on floribunda roses, privet, sea pink, blanket flowers, coreopsis, Moonshine yarrow; sour cherries formed; berries on sand cherries; pods forming on Siberian peas; zinnia and reseeded morning glory seeds coming up.

Bedding plants: Pansies, sweet alyssum, petunia, nicotiana, moss rose, impatiens.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, goldfinches, pair of hummingbirds around beauty bush, skinny pale red snake, geckos, cabbage butterfly, hornets, harvester and small black ants.

Weekly update: Donald Rumsfeld was ridiculed when he divided reality into known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Overlooking his context, it seems a perfectly reasonable way to deal with the fact many plants exist outside popular wildflower guides.

The known unknowns are the ones that appear every year in roughly the same place at roughly the same time with enough consistency that you recognize them, much like the man who sold newspapers at a street booth in Philadelphia in the 1960's. I saw him every day, but he discouraged any conversation, made himself anonymous.

The unknown unknowns are the ones you see once or twice, but not often enough to see any pattern, much like customers at the wooden shack you think you’ve seen before but aren’t quite sure if they even live in the neighborhood.

The one can be given a label, the others remain lists of characteristics.


Pink bud is a known unknown. It bloomed profusely in 2010 and hardly at all last year, though there were many buds. This year it's blooming again near the chamisas where it grows on a platform raised a few inches from the water path in the far arroyo. I don’t know if it was the drought of 2010 that determined the blooming pattern in 2011, or the late snow.

It seems to only boom once in spring, with the behavior of an annual. The heads emerge from the leaves as the stems push their way through the earth.


They begin as tight knobs of round pink balls that break into groups of five, with one in the center. These each break into two. The pink turns ivory before the five petaled flowers open. The resemble the tops of milkweed flowers, but not the undersides. Within each cluster, the center floret opens first, then the others in succesion.


Within a few weeks they produce what can only be called berries that begin green, then turn purple.


The leaves that grew lush during the summer, begin to brown in August.


The stems thicken and become wooden. The empty flower stalks turn black, their fruiting ends harden.


The roots are straight, stiff single white shafts with asparagus like scales.

After the leaves die, everything blows away, leaving no surface evidence of their existence.


Rosemary is a very different known unknown. While pink bud flourishes in late spring, this perennial likes colder, damper days.

It took me a while to distinguish it from blue gilia, which has similar clusters of basal needle shaped leaves and grows in the same area. However, the leaves of this form a ring, rather like ring muhly grass, that produces new growth on the edges of the old in late fall. This turns chartreuse, even rust, in winter, then begins to brighten in March. When you look carefully, they look a bit like shrubby branches.


The flowers are impossible to see, unless you bend to them - the tiny champaign white flowers blend into the sand around them. You’re only alerted to their existence when you see the stems rising above like grass pinks. The fact I rarely see them fully open may mean they aren’t morning flowers.


While it’s blooming at the moment, last year I didn’t see the flowers until October. And, while I’ve seen it in other places, the place it’s growing on the prairie is on the north facing side of a hilly rise that’s often covered with active biological crust that supports moss.


Photographs:
1. Pink bud under grass and a chamisa near the far arroyo floor, 27 April 2012.

2. Pink bud flower, 22 May 2011.

3. Pink bud emerging, 11 April 2010.

4. Pink bud groups of five with central floret opening first; just emerging cluster at the back; 22 May 2011.

5. Pink bud green berries beginning to turn purple; leaves have grown lush; 30 May 2010.

6. Pink bud leaves turning brown under a chamisa, 14 August 2011.

7. Pink bud remains, 25 September 2011.


8. Rosemary flower, 30 May 2011.

9. Mature rosemary plant with this year’s growth coexisting with the ruins of the past, 4 March 2012.

10. Greened up rosemary plant with barely visible flower buds, 27 March 2011.

11. Rosemary in winter, with an activate biological crust and moss on an north facing rise edging the far arroyo, 29 December 2010.

12. Bright green rosemary in bloom in fall, 9 October 2011.

White Evening Primrose

Weather: March winds and June temperatures; the end of afternoon clouds marked the beginning of what is usually an early summer drought; last useful precipitation 4/9/12; 13:47 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming in the area: Wild pink, Austrian Copper, Persian yellow, Dr. Huey and other hybrid roses, snowball, silver lace vine, bearded iris, muscular yuccas, red hot poker, peony, datura, donkey tail spurge, blue perennial salvia; buds on pyracantha.

Beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, tamarix, fernleaf globemallow, western stickseed, bractless and tawny cryptanthas, alfilerillo, hoary cress, purple and tansy mustards, purple mat flower, gypsum phacelia, tufted white evening primrose, antelope horns, blue gilia, running sand verbena, bindweed, oxalis, flea bane, goat’s beard, common and native dandelion; needle, rice, June and cheat grasses; buds on cream tips, three awn grass.

In my yard: Black locust, spirea, beauty bush, skunk bush, tulip, baby blue iris, Bath pinks, snow-in-summer, small leaved soapwort, coral bells, vinca, yellow alyssum, blue flax, pink evening primrose; buds on floribunda roses, privet, Jupiter’s beard, sea pink, golden spur columbine; squash seeds up.

Bedding plants: Pansies, sweet alyssum, petunia.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, goldfinches, hummingbird, geckos, hornets, harvester and small black ants.

Ants have been taking Siberian elm seeds back to their hills. I’m not sure which is worse, the botanical problem or the zoological cure.

Weekly update: This has been a most peculiar spring. After a prolonged drought with severe winters, the year started out as one of recovery - good snow in December with more in February and tolerably low temperatures.

Then came March. The winds didn’t seem unusual in the beginning, but by the end of the month there’d been several bursts of unusually high ones with afternoon temperatures jumping from the mid 50's at the beginning to the mid 70's by the end. Then, no more rain. Weather watchers were proclaiming it the driest, hottest month in recorded history (which isn’t more than about a hundred years).

Unlike modern Cassandras who live in darkened rooms where the only information on climate comes from television, plants take their cues from so many sources it’s hard to know what’s motivating them. Take the large flowered white evening primroses, which are blooming in my yard for the first time since 2008.

At first, I assumed they had returned because of the extended warm growing season with wet soil and moisture in the winds, but my memories get a bit confused. As near as I can tell there are two species that grow around here, the ones blooming now with large flowers on low plants


and ones that bloom later in the season with small flowers on taller plants.

The one with abutting petals is probably the tufted species, Oenothera caespitosa. The one with petals separated into crosses is likely the prairie evening primrose, Oenothera albicaulis.

The small flowered annual is relatively common, especially later in the season when it grows in what seem the same places outside the fences along the orchard road. The perennial large flowered species seems to only appear this time of year and is more sporadic. The greatest florescence occurred some years ago when I was still commuting to Los Alamos and one field where cattle were grazing was filled with glowing white early in the morning.

When I didn’t see them again, I assumed the animals had eaten or trampled them before they had produced seeds. When they stopped appearing in my yard with any predictability, I blamed the primrose beetle invasion of 2003.

Then I drove to Albuquerque Saturday where I saw the four petaled flowers scattered along the west side of the road and in the median in the San Domingo area. They weren’t prolific, but they were there.

My curiosity was piqued. I drove the road to Los Alamos earlier this week to see if they were back there like they were here. The area of relatively flat Santa Clara lands between the road and the river was filled with white. The ravines were empty and the area further south where I remembered them from the past had few.


When I went back to my notes, such as they were then, all I found for 2001 was: “4/30 bloom beyond fence, bloom SI and SC.” I made no notes the next year. In 2003 all I wrote was “6/9 not see on way to work.” In 2004 I was equally cryptic, “5/15 some blooming along SL roadside, not see any yet in fields.”

I know SI refers to the San Ildefonso section of the road to Los Alamos from Española and SC to Santa Clara domain, but SL is a mystery. It’s always hard to record the absence of something, which is what I was trying to do.

I have no idea what the weather was like in 2001. It’s hard to describe the actual weather a month ago - it's more than the recorded temperatures and wind speeds. But one thing I realized is 2001 was the year after the Cerro Grande fire, and this is the first season after the Las Conchas and other fires.

Fire can affect seeds in a number of ways. Heat, smoke or chemicals can stratify long dormant seeds, but which is hard to know. Nurseries use sulfuric acid when they need to duplicate the effects of smoke.

When I was trying to learn what was in the smoke last summer, the laboratory was more concerned with telling us what wasn’t there. If I went beyond its published test results to discover the constituents of smoke in general the available information was too contradictory to help.

While smoke may be important, it’s been many months since the worst passed and ten years is a long period for seeds to survive in the soil. Potted plants are sold by some native plant nurseries who probably don’t treat the seed. Something else must have contributed to outbrust of color.

Winds can carry warmed or water soddened seeds that have been dislodged from the ground by the fire’s own wind currents or those of aerial fire fighting equipment. When I look at the general distribution of the current flowers, they spread out in a narrow area north of the Black Mesa on both sides of the river, that is, the Santa Clara land on the west, and my yard and the prairie to the south on the east side of the Río Grande along with the scattered area some miles south of last year’s Cochiti fire corridor.

The Cerro Grande fire didn’t move as far north as the Las Conchas one, and the flowers in 2001, if my memory set by the presence of those cattle is correct, were close to the path of that fire which was successfully contained before it reached far into Santa Clara land.

If fire, wind and smoke are the reason for the many flowers this year, then I probably won’t see them like this again - much of the available fuel was consumed last year. But, if they are the product of the unusual growing season, I may never see them again, or they could become a standard feature of late spring. The future is impossible to know, and its historic sources difficult to reconstruct, even when you’ve lived through them.


Photographs:
1. Large flowered tufted white evening primrose with western stickseed in my yard the last time they appeared, 17 May 2008.

2. Tufted white evening primrose, Santa Clara land, 2 May 2012.

3. Small flowered prairie white evening primroses on a neighbor’s land, 3 August 2008.

4. Tufted white evening primroses on Santa Clara land, 3 May 2012; the line of brighter colored trees marks the Río Grande; the Sangre de Cristo rise in the distance.

5. Tufted white evening primroses on Santa Clara land with cholla cacti, 3 May 2012.

The Borages

Weather: Last useful precipitation 4/9/12; 13:34 hours of daylight today.

The early warm period has turned into an ideal time for planting, because the afternoons are still clouding over and moisture is in the air, unlike how it will be in June. The only problem is the occasional spate of high winds like those Thursday afternoon.

What’s blooming in the area: Apples, Austrian Copper, Persian yellow and hybrid roses, forsythia, wisteria, bearded iris, yucca, moss phlox, donkey tail spurge, blue perennial salvia.

Grapes are leafing; this year they waited until after the last cold day, and so weren’t set back like they were last year.

Beyond the walls and fences: Cottonwood, tamarix, fernleaf globemallow, western stickseed, bractless cryptantha, alfilerillo, hoary cress, purple and tansy mustards, purple mat flower, gypsum phacelia, antelope horns, blue gilia, running sand verbena, bindweed, oxalis, goat’s beard, common and native dandelion, June and cheat grasses; buds on Apache plume, cream tips, rice and needle grasses.

Elm seeds are accumulating everywhere.

Large flowered white evening primroses are blooming for the first time since the primrose beetle invasion of 2003.

In my yard: Spirea, lilacs, Siberian pea, tulip, baby blue iris, Bath pinks, snow-in-summer, vinca, yellow alyssum, blue flax; buds on beauty bush, snowball, Jupiter’s beard, coral bells.

New buds are appearing on my catalpa; only one branch seems to have nothing.

Reseeded cosmos seeds are putting out second leaves.

Bedding plants: Pansies, sweet alyssum, petunia.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geranium, pomegranate.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, gecko, harvester and small black ants.

Feeding the local homeless cat has done nothing to discourage the chickadees from breaking into my soffit to nest. I’d rather hoped they’d do a better job of reconnoitering the neighborhood. I started putting out food last summer to stop the cat from lurking under their nest, and hoped, in return, the birds would finally abandon my house.

Weekly update: Spring sees a somewhat orderly succession of plant families, under the general dominance of the roses. Now it’s the borages turn to flower.

The first to arrive was western stickseed, which began germinating in my driveway in early March, and was blooming by mid April.


Because of the warm weather, cool nights, and not quite dehydrating air, the stems are now six to eight inches tall and haven’t started producing seeds.


The next to appear was bractless cyrptantha, which began blooming a few days later than stickseed. Normally, it remains close to the ground


but again, because of the unusual spring, its stems have begun to elongate.


Now there’s a plant blooming I don’t know, but recognize. I’ve been watching it for several years growing in sandy areas of the far arroyo and its banks, but haven’t found it in any of my wildflower field guides. It started producing five petaled white flowers a week ago, on small furry plants like the already blooming members of the borage family.


This week, the stems for the heads have extended, both in the supporting member and within the cluster, so it begins to resemble a mounded phlox.


Soon the florets will brown


And look like the plant has died, much like the annual stickseed and cryptantha which will disappear.


However, come late summer, new leaves will appear


which will persist into winter. Then, some of those winter kill, and new ones emerge, until the cycle repeats itself.


I haven’t yet noticed when seeds germinate, but I’m guessing it was in the weeks just before the flowers appeared. There are more plants out there than I remember this winter.

As for its identity, tiny plants with limited blooming periods are easily overlooked by wildflower enthusiasts, and so are omitted from popular guide books. The number of petals, their color, the hairiness of the leaves is not enough for a botanist to classify a plant, but they are enough for me to give it a label.

If anyone knows what this little flower is, please let me know.

Notes: For more on western stickseed, see entry for 9 December 2007; for bractless cryptantha, see entry for 9 May 2010.

Vicki suggested my borage is the bow-nut cryptantha (Cryptantha jamesii) shown on Gene Jercinovic’s Flowers of the Manzanos web site. When I went to look for it, I found it more closely resembled the tawny cryptantha (Cryptantha fulvocanescens) on Al Schneider’s South West Colorado Wildflowers web site. I never would have found this without Vicki’s assistance. Thanks for the help. As for which species it is, Schneider said it’s nearly impossible to tell one cryptantha from another without a microscope to examine the seeds.

Photographs:
1. Unknown plant, 27 April, 2012, along the bank of the ranch road.

2. Western stickseed, 4 March 2012, growing in my drive in one of its favorite places, the top of a harvester ant hill.

3. Western stickseed, 14 April 2012, on the shoulder of the orchard road.

4. Bractless cryptantha, 18 April 2012, on the prairie.

5. Bractless cryptantha, 19 April 2012, along the bank of the ranch road.

6. Unknown plant, 19 April 2012, far arroyo bottom.

7. Unknown plant colony, 27 April 2012, along the base of the far arroyo left bank.

8. Unknown plant, 23 May 2010, on the prairie.

9. Unknown plant, 27 June 2010, on the prairie.

10. Unknown plant, 28 November 2011, on the prairie.

11. Unknown plant, 18 April 2012, on the prairie.

12. Unknown plant, 27 April 2012.

Tender Buds

Weather: Last useful precipitation 4/9/12; 13:21 hours of daylight today.

Thursday was the watershed, a cloudy day ideal for work. Before there was the fear mornings might be too cool to plant; now afternoons are too hot.

What’s blooming in the area: Apples peaked, flowering quince peaked, forsythia peaked, wisteria, bearded iris, moss phlox, donkey tail spurge.

Beyond the walls and fences: Choke cherry peaked, cottonwood, fernleaf globemallow, western stickseed, cryptantha, alfilerillo, hoary cress, purple and tansy mustards, purple mat flower, gypsum phacelia, bindweed, dandelion, cheat grass; buds on yucca, cream tips; Russian olive, tamarix, sandbar willow, chamisa leafing.

In my yard: Sand cherry peaked, purple leaf sand cherry peaked, fragrant lilacs, Siberian pea, daffodil, tulip, vinca, yellow alyssum; buds on spirea.

Bedding plants: Pansies, sweet alyssum, petunia.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geranium, pomegranate.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbird, other small brown birds, bees on Siberian pea, caterpillars around a dandelion, harvester and small black ants.

Weekly update: I have this feeling - it’s too amorphous to be called a superstition and much too silly to be a quack theory - but, I act like if I don’t look for something unwanted, it won’t be there.

All spring, as the weather was unusually warm, I avoided the tender trees, the ones that, year after year, leaf out, only to have their early growth killed by frost.

Last Saturday I couldn’t avoid them any longer. The Virginia creeper and trees of heaven near the village were leafing.


I had to look at mine, and every one of the frost sensitive trees was showing signs of life.

Tuesday, temperatures fell below freezing.

No one worries what that meant for the creeper and trees of heaven - it would take a lot more than a little cold to kill them.

Luckily, the roses of Sharon, those shrubs that get delayed most years by unwelcome chills, weren’t affected. They’ve been slow to go beyond the green showing through the buds at the tips of branches. Even now, only a few leaves have opened into small pennants.


The black locust, however, did notice the temperature drop. Monday, the buds were breaking and leaves were unfurling.


Wednesday, all those early leaves were abandoned, but new buds have since been opening on their graves, oblivious to what went before.


The catalpa is another matter. Since last year’s rough summer, I’ve been torn between giving it the water I suspected it needed and fear any notice would encourage it to emerge too soon. Last year, it lost all its terminal buds to frost, and only leaf buds set back from the tips emerged later.

Monday, this year’s green rounded buds had begun, ever so slightly, to open.


Wednesday, those early essays were gone and not much has happened since to indicate there is any reserve life force.


I did begin watering - morning temperatures since Wednesday have been in the 40's and afternoons near 80. Recent history sends me out each day to look, only now I really wish looking could make something happen.

Photographs:
1. Tree of heaven near village, 14 April 2012.

2. Virginia creeper near village, 14 April 2012.

3. Rose of Sharon, 20 April 2012.

4. Black locust, 16 April 2012.

5. Black locust, 19 April 2012.

6. Catalpa, 16 April 2012.

7. Catalpa, 19 April 2012; last year’s dead buds remain as well.

Lilac Buds

Weather: Rained Monday. Seeds germinated Tuesday, probably unwanted. Spits since with winds and occasional thunder. Stronger winds yesterday. 13:08 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming in the area: Apple, crab apple, flowering quince, forsythia, wisteria, tulips, first bearded iris, moss phlox, donkey tail spurge; lilacs almost open; silver lace vine leafing.

Beyond the walls and fences: Choke cherry, cottonwood, western stickseed, alfilerillo, hoary cress, purple and tansy mustards, dandelion; tree of heaven budding.

In my yard: Sand cherry, purple leaf sand cherry, Siberian pea, daffodil, baby blue iris, vinca; buds on spirea, yellow alyssum; snow ball leafing.

Bedding plants: Pansies, sweet alyssum, petunia.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geranium, pomegranate.

Animal sightings: Small birds, gecko, harvester and small black ants.

Weekly update: There’s something to be said for Nits and Lice, a tiny plant you don’t know exists until you see the flowers. Growing lilacs is more like raising elephants - there’s a long gestation period when anything can go wrong. If you thought much about it, you’d go insane.

Last year promised to be one of the best. It had been cold, if dry. The flowers opened April 20 and immediately attracted bees. The next morning I could smell them. Then, before they’d had a chance to completely open, on the first of May, it snowed.


The snow turned to ice. The open flowers turned brown.


The unopened buds died, but didn’t fall away. The shrubs’ hormone systems abandoned them. The carcasses hung around until a week or so ago when the repeated high winds finally broke them lose.


New leaf buds appear as soon as the leaves all drop, usually late November.


Then you wait. In December, after our heaviest snow I went out to see if there was still snow protecting the roots when the sun threatened to evaporate the snow covering just as temperatures fell.


The buds stayed hard shells. Then the weather warmed prematurely. The middle of March, a bit a green showed through the tips. A week later, the expanding buds outgrow their wraps.


Then, the first week of April, the incipient flowers showed themselves, tight little cobs of tiny dark buds, rather than miniature ears of corn.


Within days, the stems between the buds grew and the clusters were revealed, still skeletal versions of themselves.


This past week, the shrubs nearer the river were close to blooming. On mine, the individual florets inflated into round balloons, and turned rosier.


Then, the floret throats extended


before, then, the four petals opened to reveal the true lavender color.


In the village, the shrubs are farther advanced, some in full bloom,


while the weather forecast for the weekend is rain or snow, depending, with temperatures falling below freezing, or not.

It’s one thing to watch something unfold in the time lapse photography of Walt Disney’s Living Desert, when there’s no suspense to suspend. You just know they wouldn’t show something they couldn’t complete. With lilacs, you have the time lapse with no assurance there'll be a happy ending.

Photographs:
1. Persian lilac, with buds and leaves, 6 April 2012.

2. Common lilac the day after last year’s late snow storm, 2 May 2011.

3. Paul Thirion lilac a few days after last year’s late snow storm, 5 May 2011.

4. Persian lilac, with last year’s dead buds and this year’s new leaves opening, 29 march 2012.

5. Persian lilac with new buds, unchanged from late November, 4 March 2012.

6. Paul Thirion lilac in snow, 23 December 2011.

7. Paul Thirion lilac with expanding buds, 21 March 2012.

8. Persian lilac with just emerging racemes and last year’s dead buds, 27 March 2012.

9. Persian lilac with extending racemes, 6 April 2012.

10. Common lilac with inflated buds, 12 April 2012.

11. Common lilac with extended throats, 14 April 2012.

12. Paul Thirion lilac with first florets open, 14 April 2012.

13. I have three lilacs, but there’s little difference in timing between them. The differences come from distance from the river, with the one in the village closest to the river the first to bloom (picture taken April 2014)

14. and the one a quarter mile up the road, still rosy and bursting open the same day, 14 April 2014.