Asparagus

Weather: Summer high temperatures arrived just before the solstice; last rain 5/13/12; 14:33 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid perpetual roses, buddleia, Japanese honey suckle, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, Spanish broom, red yucca, red hot poker, daylily, hollyhock, datura, sweet pea, alfalfa, Russian sage, scabiosa, larkspur, yellow flowered yarrow, zinnias, brome grass; one-inch green apples visible in orchards.

We've moved into the season of bright orange daylilies and trumpet creepers that require little care; the roses only remain where they get extra attention.

Beyond the walls and fences: Tamarix, showy milkweed, leatherleaf globemallow, mullein, alfilerillo, tumble mustard, stick leaf, yellow, scarlet bee blossom, velvetweed, white and pink bindweeds, scurf peas, bush morning glory, silver leaf nightshade, buffalo gourd, Indian paintbrush next to chamisa, horse tail, prostrate knotweed, goat’s head, Hopi tea, plain’s paper flower, goat’s beard, fleabane, green Mexican hat, golden hairy asters, native dandelion, needle and rice grasses.

In my yard, looking east: Snow-in-summer, Maltese cross, bouncing Bess, white and creeping baby’s breath, coral beardtongue, Jupiter’s beard, pink evening primrose, winecup mallow, sidalcea Party Girl, California and Shirley poppies, Saint John’s wort.

Looking south: Rugosa, floribunda and miniature roses, Dutch clover, tomatillo; first ripe raspberries, but many drying from heat.

Looking west: Trumpet and oriental lilies, blue flax, Siberian and Seven Hills Giant catmints, Romanian sage, Johnson’s Blue geranium, Goodness Grows speedwell, David phlox, white spurge, white mullein, perennial four o’clock, ladybells, Shasta daisy, Mönch asters; buds on sea lavender, purple coneflowers.

Looking north: Golden spur columbine, hartweig evening primrose, butterfly weed, squash, chocolate flower, coreopsis, blanket flower, anthemis, Mexican hat; buds on chrysanthemum; fruit ripened on sand cherry.

Bedding plants: Petunia, nicotiana, moss rose, snapdragons.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Hummingbirds, small brown birds, geckos, cabbage butterflies, ladybugs, bumble bees and other small bees, hornets, harvester and small black ants.

Weekly update: Asparagus is a most unusual vegetable. The member of the lily family quite naturally behaves more like a bulb than an annual green.

It grows easily from seed, but seedlings take three years to mature enough for sprouts to be harvested. Many gardeners buy year-old crowns. Once established, individual plants can last more than ten years and a bed more than twenty.

At the end of the spring cutting season you have to let the plants produce their tall, ferny branches with scale like leaves which, like tulips and daffodils, store the nutrients for next year’s crop in their underlying mass of matted roots.

The plants are either male or female. Both are edible, but the females also produce green berries which turn red later in the summer.

The seedlings go wild, and can become a nuisance in commercial beds. The Rutgers Asparagus Breeding Program has developed F₁ hybrids like Jersey Knight which produce only male plants. These don’t waste energy with seed production in summer, and so the next year’s sprouts are more desired by gourmets.

While garden guides tell you anyone can grow asparagus - you only need to add lots of organic matter to your soil - most are trying to turn the improbable into the possible. Yahya ibn al Awam warned in the late 1100’s that it was “very fond of damp places.”

When I was growing up in southern Michigan, I became aware different parts of the state grew different plants. It was partly latitude, but mainly the consequence of glaciers. The southern part where I lived was good for the usual farm crops like wheat and corn, and had supported hard wood forests.

In the more glaciated north, the soils were thinner and the primary trees were white pine. Within that area there was a section between Grand Rapids and Traverse City where land just in from Lake Michigan produced good cherries and peaches because of moisture and other ecological conditions fostered by the lake. It was within one small area of the cherry belt, an area in Oceana County around Hart, where people grew asparagus for canners.

When I see asparagus growing near the village, what surprises me isn’t that it’s gone wild - it’s naturalized in most parts of the country. What surprises me is that people got asparagus to grow in the first place.

According to al Awam, Asparagus officinalis was grown in Spain for the dried roots which were used to “banish all taint from rank meat.” William Dunmire says the plant was taken to México, but there’s no evidence it ever reached this part of the empire.

The French who came with La Salle to settle around Matagora Bay on the Texas gulf coast however did plant asparagus in 1685. The plants survived longer than they did, and were recognized in their abandoned gardens by the Spanish in 1689.

Dunmire says the French who later settled New Orleans also grew the vegetable. The native Americans who are reported to have eaten asparagus were either ones associated with the French - the Iroquois - or from the southeastern part of the county - the Cherokee.

Asparagus probably came into New Mexico with either settlers descended from the French or with Presbyterian missionaries and others from New England. It wasn’t the sort of plant to appeal to cattle raising Texans who took land east of the Sangre de Cristo.

But, it definitely has naturalized here. One plant I noticed last summer is growing so close to the steel farm fence along an alfalfa field the farmer would have to dig it out - reapers and snow plows won’t dislodge it. Another colony is growing just beyond the end of a ditch along the farm road.


In 1912, Smithsonian researchers found the plant was known to local Tewa speakers, but not generally used by them. In the 1930’s, students of Edward Castetter discovered Isleta was eating wild plants in the area south of Albuquerque.

Later, Leonora Curtin was told espárrago berries were mixed with ground leaves of yerba del sapo to treat stomach problems. Ambrosia concertiflora was considered a female plant and used by men, while Ambrosia acanthicarpa was considered the male plant appropriate for use by women who did not add berries.

The gender association may be one reason local Spanish speaking men used the berries for stomach problems. The other may be that asparagus often affects the smell of urine and that may have suggested a use for the stomach.

The forms of ragweed mentioned by Curtin grow along a diagonal running southwest from Colfax County, but not in Rio Arriba county. Colfax County was the site of the Maxwell land grant owned by Charles Beaubien, a French Canadian fur trader who settled in Taos.

The local plants probably came with irrigation waters moving in the Santa Cruz river from Chimayó. Presbyterian missionaries introduced many vegetables there. Since, of course, artists and others from places like Santa Fé have settled along the river. Any could be the source of the local plants which, most likely, are a form of Mary Washington, the descendent of selections made by Jesse Norton in Massachusetts after the rust fungus, Puccinia asparagi, decimated the beds in that state in the 1890’s.

Notes:
Castettler, Edward F. Uncultivated Native Plants Used as Sources of Food, 1935, draws on work done by his graduate students, including Volney H. Jones, The Ethnobotany of the Isleta Indians, 1931.

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

Dunmire, William W. Gardens of New Spain, 2004.

Ibn al Awam, Yahya. Kitab al Felaha, late 1100's, translated as A Moorish Calendar by Philip Lord, 1979.

Moerman, Dan. Native American Ethnobotany, 1998, summarizes data from a number of ethnographies including Arthur Caswell Parker, Iroquois Uses of Maize and Other Food Plants, 1910 and Paul B. Hamel and Mary U. Chiltoskey, Cherokee Plants and Their Uses -- A 400 Year History, 1975.

Robbins, William Wilfred, John Peabody Harrington, and Barbara Friere-Marreco. Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians, 1916.

Photographs:
1. Asparagus growing along the farm road, 18 June 2012.

2. Base of asparagus stems growing along the farm road, 18 June 2012, with remains of previous years’ growth. The scales are the leaves.

3. Asparagus in winter along the orchard road, 18 January 2012.

4. The same asparagus plant last summer, 10 July 2011.

Romanian Sage

Weather: High temperatures, low afternoon humidity; last rain 5/13/12; 14:34 hours of daylight today.

You hear people claim sun spots are the real causes of drought on this planet, usually followed by a quick explanation of why they’re wrong. However, when you read that this past Wednesday and Thursday the sun was more active than usual, and that the “coronal mass ejections” it produced then were supposed to hit the Earth yesterday, you can see how easy it is to suspect a connection.

Wednesday was the day I noticed my watering methods could no longer compensate for humidity levels. On Thursday, humidity levels in Santa Fé got down to 4%. Saturday the weather bureau was forecasting a slight chance of rain which took the form of high clouds during the afternoon and high winds in the early evening. These could all just as easily be blamed on the approaching solstice.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid perpetual roses, Japanese honey suckle, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, Spanish broom, red yucca, red hot poker, daylily, hollyhock, datura, sweet pea, alfalfa, Russian sage, blue perennial salvia, scabiosa, larkspur, yellow flowered yarrow, brome grass.

Beyond the walls and fences: Tamarix, cholla cactus peaked, showy milkweed, leatherleaf globemallow, mullein, alfilerillo, tumble mustard, purple mat flower, gypsum phacelia, stick leaf, yellow, tufted and prairie white evening primroses, scarlet bee blossom, velvetweed, pale blue trumpets, blue gilia, white and pink bindweeds, wild licorice, scurf peas, loco, yellow sweet clover, silver leaf nightshade, buffalo gourd, horse tail, plain’s paper flower, goat’s beard, cream tips, áñil del muerto, fleabane, strap leaf and golden hairy asters, native dandelion, needle grass; cotton on cottonwood.

In my yard, looking east: Snow-in-summer, Maltese cross, bouncing Bess, white and creeping baby’s breath, coral beardtongue, sputtering Jupiter’s beard, pink evening primrose, winecup mallow, sidalcea Party Girl, California and Shirley poppies, Saint John’s wort.

Looking south: Rugosa, floribunda and miniature roses, Dutch clover, tomatillo; red fruit appearing on raspberries.

Looking west: Blue flax, Siberian and Seven Hills Giant catmints, Romanian sage, Johnson’s Blue geranium, Husker and purple beardtongues, white spurge, Shasta daisy; buds on lilies, sea lavender, David phlox, purple coneflowers.
Looking north: Golden spur columbine, hartweig evening primrose, butterfly weed, squash, chocolate flower, coreopsis, blanket flower, anthemis, Mexican hat; buds on chrysanthemum; catalpa producing pods.

Bedding plants: Petunia, nicotiana, moss rose, snapdragons.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbirds, goldfinch and other small brown birds, geckos, cabbage, sulphur, monarch and paisley butterflies, ladybugs on goat’s beard, bumble bees and other small bees, hornets, grasshoppers, harvester and small black ants.


Weekly update: Objects have a way of outliving your enthusiasm. There are still croquet and badminton sets in the garage from my childhood that I know can never be used in bunch grass New Mexico. There’s probably even a tennis racket somewhere out there.

There are empty planters and clay pots that are still around because the logistics of emptying the dirt from them to throw them out is beyond considering. And, there are the perennials that take hold and continue after you stop noticing them very much.

My interest in blue flowered salvias was sparked by Salvia farinacea, a delicately leafed bedding plant with light, steel blue flowers. When I was still in Michigan, I bought some Blue Victoria from a local greenhouse that was wonderful. That place didn’t carry them the next year, and the ones I bought elsewhere died. I tried them once in New Mexico and they barely survived.

While I was regretting my luck with mealy blue sage, nursery catalogs in the 1980's were in the throes of a perennial blue salvia mania, with new varieties being offered every year. I thought it would be wonderful to have a perennial form of that plant, only the plants they were offering were very different.

Farinacea, which actually is a perennial in warmer parts of the country, can mix with other plants aesthetically. Varieties of Salvia nemorosa like East Friesland and May Night are soloists that look best in demonstration gardens where a bit of brown mulch sets off the dark flowers that are lost when surrounded by greenery.


Before my interest was sated by success, I experimented with other salvias, including one from Romania. How can one not be intrigued by something called Salvia transsylvanica?

Unlike those species being heavily promoted by the nursery industry, the one I bought in 1998 not only survived, but produced a seedling the following summer. The colony died in 2005 after grasshoppers decimated it before a hard winter. When I replaced the mint family member the following spring, I discovered another seedling in the grass which is only smaller than the parent because it gets less water.

Unlike the specimen varieties, this has large triangular grey-green leaves quite capable of elbowing out competitors from the space they need. The flowers look the same only the stalks are longer and the florets more widely spaced.


Like many other plants that have done better than I expected in my garden, this one evolved in a steppe grassland environment, this time the dissected low plateau drained by rivers flowing from the surrounding Carpathian mountains to the Danube where the annual precipitation is around 22". The primary grasses in the area are Stipa species. The needle grass that grows here is Stipa comata.

A team led by Eszter Ruprecht suggests steppe vegetation was replaced by forest lands in that area of Romania during the late glacial period. The durmast oak-hornbeam forests were cut some thousand years ago, and relic grasses from the glacial period returned, as well as plants from Siberia and the Pontic. Romanian sage developed as an endemic plant.

In the past hundred years or so, grazing has been abandoned as unremunerative and many of the grasslands have been converted to pine plantations. Surprisingly, this salvia is one of the grassland plants that’s flourished in the new regime.

Like many plants, including the highly cultured salvias, the coarse Romanian sage has done better than usual this year, able to complete a cycle that was begun during the snows of winter before the dry heat of June took command.

For much the same reason the badminton set gets toted from place to place, plants like Transylvanian salvia are left to themselves - one’s never quite ready to say goodby to the relics of one’s past selves - after all they might have been the better ones. In the case of this sage, it’s possible the best may reappear.

Notes:
Frazen, Carl. “See the Hyperactive Solar Region That’s Blasting Earth Up Close,” Talking Points Memo, 14 June 2012.

Oroian, Silvia and Mihaela Sãmãrghitan. “Dry Grasslands of the Corhan Hill - SaBed Village (Mures County),” Environmental Science and Engineering 3:181-194:2006.

Ruprecht, Eszter, Anna Szabó, Márton Z. Enyedi and Jürgen Dengler. “Steppe-like Grasslands in Transylvania (Romania): Characterisation and Influence of Management on Species Diversity and Composition,” Tuexenia 29: 353-368:2009.

Photographs:
1. Romanian sage, 11 June 2012.

2. Same plant, 5 June 2012, surrounded by needle and June grasses.

3. Blue Queen Salvia sylvestris outflanked by ladybells, 6 June 2012. It’s possible this is some other salvia; I planted several different ones and all seemed to die out; this one reappeared to bloom last summer, along with what I think is an East Friesland.

4. Romanian sage leaves, 12 May 2012.

Nature’s Wonders

Weather: Sun, wind, smoke from fires around Santa Fé and Cochití with last rain 5/13/12; 14:32 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming in the area: Dr. Huey and other hybrid roses, Japanese honey suckle, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, Spanish broom, red hot poker, daylily, hollyhock, datura, sweet pea, alfalfa, Russian sage, blue perennial salvia, scabiosa, larkspur, yellow flowered yarrow, brome grass.

Farmers making their first hay cuts.

Beyond the walls and fences: Tamarix, tangerine yellow flowered prickly pear and cholla cacti, showy and whorled milkweeds, leatherleaf globemallow, alfilerillo, tumble mustard peaked, purple mat flower peaked, gypsum phacelia, stick leaf, tufted and prairie white evening primroses, scarlet bee blossom, velvetweed, pale blue trumpets, blue gilia, white and pink bindweeds, oxalis, wild licorice, scurf peas, loco, silver leaf nightshade, buffalo gourd, horse tail, plain’s paper flower, goat’s beard, cream tips, strap leaf and golden hairy asters, native dandelion, needle grass; buds on Virginia creeper.

Early dry heat, on top of little spring rain, is hastening the transition to seed production for plants like purple mat flower and woolly plantain that might have bloomed longer. So far, the wild prickly pear are producing few flowers, though they’d prepared for a great season with lots of buds.

In my yard, looking east: Bath pinks, snow-in-summer, small leaved soapwort peaked, Maltese cross, bouncing Bess, baby’s breath, sea pink, coral bells peaked, coral beardtongue, pink evening primrose, winecup mallow, Rose Queen salvia, first California and Shirley poppies, Saint John’s wort; buds on sidalcea.

Looking south: Rugosa, floribunda and miniature roses, Dutch clover, tomatillo.

Looking west: Blue flax, Siberian and Seven Hills Giant catmints, Rumanian sage, Johnson’s Blue geranium, Husker and purple beardtongues, white spurge; buds on lilies, sea lavender; pods forming on baptisia.

Looking north: Catalpa, golden spur columbine, hartweig evening primrose, chocolate flower, coreopsis, blanket flower, anthemis; buds on butterfly weed, Mexican hat; sour cherries turning red; berries forming on privet.

Bedding plants: Petunia, nicotiana, moss rose.

Those plants that prefer cool weather or shade - pansies, sweet alyssum, impatiens, snapdragons - going or gone out of bloom.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Hummingbirds, other small brown birds, geckos, cabbage, sulphur and paisley butterflies, bumble bees and other small bees, hornets, harvester and small black ants. Noisy, but invisible insects.

Some kind of cottony insect webs on plants along the shoulders. Doesn’t seem to matter if the plant is active or passed its prime, so long as there’s a bare stem.


Weekly update: You always know what the label says on a plant and what you intend. What you get is sometimes another matter. Only someone with a strong legalistic bent would try to fix a point of accountability that explains what blooms and consider suing for breach of promise.

I ordered a bare root climbing Iceberg rose from Wayside Gardens in 1998. Every year it’s gotten about three feet tall and never bloomed, probably because it’s never gotten enough water. Last year, I replaced a nearby weak spirea that hadn’t made it through the winter of 2009-2010. With the drought, I moved a hose to ensure more water in the area.

This year the Iceberg finally produced a number of semi-double, pale pink flowers. Not what I expected with the name Iceberg. Botanica describes it as a pure white floribunda introduced in 1968 as a sport of a 1958 Kordes rose. It admits there may be “occasional pinkish flushes in the bud stage, especially in the early spring and autumn when the nights are cold and damp.” It even suggests that if dew hits a petal, the morning sunshine may bring out the pink.

Temperatures are now in the high 80's and damp is a fantasy. I’m amazed the rose actually survived all these years and didn’t revert to rootstock. Why should I be surprised that when it’s finally bloomed, the environment has altered the color of the flowers in unforeseen ways?

After all, one lives with unexpected variations. For years I tried to start hollyhocks with seeds and plants, and some combination has naturalized. They’re never pure red or pure white, but hues in between. Most of the Althcea rosea are light pink


but a few are a deeper rose.


When one dies, another takes it place somewhere. They don’t seem to be that different from sweet peas, except the Lathyrus latifolia that grow around here are almost always rose colored.


Rose is probably dominant and, through natural selection, all that exists in the local gene pool. The only place I know I can see the range of Mendelian colors and quantities is where the village ditch makes a ninety degree turn and dumps water that has been running in a concrete bed into a dirt one. Soon after, the ditch angles into a narrower conduit to pass under the road, then continues, after another turn, on the other side in an open bed.

Everything downstream is the usual rose. The only place you can see light pink


or white flowers is the short stretch where transitions in bed, direction and flow rates have apparently trapped seeds coming from who knows where. The water ultimately comes from the Santa Cruz dam in Chimayó and flows miles through an open channel.


While one grows used to nature’s variations, there are also flowers that are reliably the same color year after year. I planted a number of itinerant perennials in a bed where they can go to seed. Their location and number changes from year to year, but not the color. To get variation, I had to use different species - coreopsis, anthemis, chocolate flowers, black-eyed Susans and golden spur columbines. There’s some variation in the blanket flowers, but nothing else changes.


That is, until last year, when a columbine showed up beyond the edge of the border with red sepals.

I have a friend in Santa Fé who grows the red Canadian and blue Colorado columbines along with the native Aquilegia chrysantha, and he says he sometimes gets unexpected colors. But, I know my gene pool is a pure as one can be. I bought two plants in August of 1997 from Santa Fe Greenhouse. When they didn’t do well, I ordered a few more from Weiss Brothers the next year. However, there’s was already a seedling. From that small parentage, plants have filled a bed 40' by 6' and every one has always been the same color - no mutations, no recessed characteristics ever.


The unusual plant survived the winter and has been blooming again in its isolated location. A few weeks ago, I thought I saw a very light colored columbine at the other end of the bed, upwind from the bicolor. When I looked closer, I saw it was growing with another plant with red sepals.

I could blame the effects of drought or I could consider the profligate ways of moths which may have found another species growing somewhere in the village. Or, I can just watch and wonder what will happen next year while lawyers try to sue someone for causing the Colorado Peak fire near their expensive homes in Santa Fé.

Notes: Botanica. Botanica’s Roses, 2000.

Photographs:
1. Last year’s golden spur columbine with red sepals, 27 May 2011.

2. Climbing iceberg rose, 6 June 2012.

3. Pink flowered hollyhock growing where it planted itself in needle grass, 9 June 2012.

4. Rose colored hollyhock, 6 June 2012.

5. Rose colored sweet pea which has climbed into a red leafed plum, 4 June 2012.

6. Light pink flowered sweet peas growing along a village ditch, 5 June 2012.

7. White and rose sweet peas growing along the same section of shaded ditch, 5 June 2012.

8. Migrating perennials, including golden spur columbine, coreopsis and blanket flowers, 5 June 2012.

9. Golden spur columbine with a bicolor and an albino in their darting fish phase at the west end of the bed, 24 may 2012.


10. Golden spur columbine plant with red sepals that’s come back this year at the east end of the bed, 13 May 2012.

Cream Tips

Weather: Temperatures higher; last rain 5/13/12; 14:27 hours of daylight today.

Morning temperatures have been running at least five degrees higher than usual, suggesting some kind of dust or fumes in the air are holding in the day’s heat. Suspect some combination of debris from the southern fires and car exhausts coming down from places like Santa Fe.

What’s blooming in the area: Dr. Huey and other hybrid roses, Japanese honeysuckle, silver lace vine, Spanish broom, red hot poker, datura, sweet pea, alfalfa, blue perennial salvia, yellow flowered yarrow, brome grass; buds on daylily, hollyhock. Onion heads visible from road. First hay cuts in alfalfa and brome grass fields.

Beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume peaked, tamarix, yellow flowered prickly pear, showy milkweed, fernleaf globemallow, cheese mallow, alfilerillo, tumble mustard, purple mat flower, gypsum phacelia browning, stick leaf, tufted white evening primrose, scarlet bee blossom, pale blue trumpets, blue gilia, white and pink bindweeds, nits and lice, oxalis, wild licorice, scurf peas, loco, silver leaf nightshade, buffalo gourd, horse tail, amaranth, plain’s paper flower, goat’s beard, cream tips, strap leaf and golden hairy asters, native dandelion; needle, rice and three awn grasses; buds on Virginia creeper.

In my yard, looking east: Bath pinks, snow-in-summer, small leaved soapwort, Jupiter’s beard, Maltese cross, sea pink, coral bells, pink evening primrose, oriental poppy, winecup mallow, Rose Queen salvia, purple clover; buds on bouncing Bess, baby’s breath.

Looking south: Rugosa, floribunda and miniature roses, Dutch clover; buds on tomatillo.

Looking west: Chives, blue flax, Siberian and Seven Hills Giant catmints, Rumanian sage, baptisia, Johnson’s Blue geranium, Husker and purple beardtongues; buds on sea lavender.

Looking north: Catalpa fragrant, golden spur columbine, hartweig evening primrose, chocolate flower, coreopsis, blanket flower; buds on coral beardtongues, anthemis, Mexican hat.

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

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbirds, other small brown birds, geckos, sulphur butterflies, ladybugs, bumble bees and other small bees, hornets, harvester and small black ants.


Weekly update: You simply cannot, with a straight face, tell someone about the wonderful hymenopappus you saw driving home. You can try leading in with adjectives like fine leaf or woolly white, but halfway through hymenopappus your smuttier minded friends will still be snickering.

Telling them that pappus is the Latin term for the hairs that turn the composite’s seeds into parachutes and hymen simply refers to their membranous quality won’t help.


Joe Guennel calls them cream tips in his Guide to Colorado Wildflowers. It was his photograph and accompanying watercolor that allowed me to first identify the taprooted perennial, and so I assumed his was the standard name.

Hymenopappus filifolius is a bit of a shape shifter. When you see it in winter, the basal rosettes of grey leaves look like carrot tops.


By the time the plant's producing flower buds, the leaves have added green and yellow pigments to become lime green.


The clusters of florets barely meet the definition of a flower: they’re much reduced to the minimum reproductive functions. The head may contain 20 to 50 narrow tubes with extended stigmas that bend backwards to nearly touch the style. The corolla tips have small lobes and there may be fine hairs of the outside of the receptacle.


Some flowers don’t even bother with pigment. I saw a white one growing by the side of the road near Jaconita earlier this year.


When the rayless flowers are fully open, the leaves are darker. Those leaves tend to disappear by mid-summer when the more common Hopi tea comes into bloom. In areas where the two overlap, it disappears into the crowd.


The species ranges through the Great Plains and intermontane region from Alberta and Saskatchewan down into México where it’s evolved into 13 subspecies. The local variety, cinereus, was first identified as Hymenopappus arenosus by Emily Gertrude Heller, née Halbach, and her husband, Amos Arthur Haller, when they were collecting in the Española area on 17 May 1897.

Cinereus is found in New Mexico and the bordering states of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas. The cultural center for the species seems to be the rio abaja where the root’s been used by the Ramah Navajo to treat coughs and was recognized by the Acoma and Laguna.


The Hopi used the lugens subspecies as a ceremonial emetic, the Kenyata Navajo used it for illnesses caused by lunar eclipses and the Ramah Navajo for arrow or bullet wounds. The Hopi used the pauciflorus variety as a beverage and the Hopi used it for a dye. The newberryi subspecies has been used by Isleta for stomach aches. The Jemez used an unspecified variety as tea, the Hopi baked one into bread, and the Zuñi used one with mutton lard on swellings.

According to Matilda Coxe Stevenson, ha’uheyaew was used by all the Zuñi fraternities which each had its own mystery medicines and who recruited the men, women and children it cured. The plant was gathered in summer by men. During a dance ceremony, the fraternity director gave pieces of the root to each man. It could also be requested at any time during the year by someone who needed it.

For something that sounds fairly well known early in the twentieth century, the plant wasn’t found when Scott Camazine and Robert Bye were surveying the medical plants of the Zuñi in 1977 and 1978. Whether the distribution of the plant had changed with the environment, had been obsoleted by modern medicine or wasn’t recognized is unknown.

All tribal identifications depend on the ability of ethnobotanists to identify plants and Dan Moerman to standardize their names. With short season flowers and sparse vegetation, it’s hard to evaluate the absence of information.

Smithsonian researchers reported local Tewa speakers were using Hopi tea as a beverage, but made no comment on cream tips, in the same years Elmer Wooton and Paul Standley were saying the plant grew on the “dry plains and hills” around Española, Ojo Caliente, Santa Fé and along the Chama river.


Notes:
Camazine, Scott and Robert A. Bye. “A Study of the Medical Ethnobotany of the Zuni Indians of New Mexico,” Journal of Ethnopharmacology 2:365-388:1980.

Guennel, G. K. Guide to Colorado Wildflowers, volume 1, 1995.

Moerman, Dan. Native American Ethnobotany, 1998, summarizes data from a number of ethnographies including George R. Swank, The Ethnobotany of the Acoma and Laguna Indians, 1932; Alfred E. Whiting, Ethnobotany of the Hopi, 1939; Leland C. Wyman and Stuart K. Harris, The Ethnobotany of the Kayenta Navaho, 1951; Harold S. Colton, “Hopi History And Ethnobotany” in A. Horr’s Hopi Indians, 1974; Volney H. Jones, The Ethnobotany of the Isleta Indians, 1931; Sarah Louise Cook, The Ethnobotany of Jemez Indians, 1930 and Edward F. Castetter, Uncultivated Native Plants Used as Sources of Food, 1935.

Robbins, William Wilfred, John Peabody Harrington, and Barbara Friere-Marreco. Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians, 1916.

Schneider, Al. “Hymenopappus filifolius,” Southwest Colorado Wildflowers website.

Stevenson, Matilda Coxe. The Zuni Indians, 1904, reprinted by The Rio Grande Press, Inc., 1985.

_____. Ethnobotany of the Zuni Indians, 1915.

Vestal, Paul A. The Ethnobotany of the Ramah Navaho, 1952.

Wooton, Elmer O. and Paul C. Standley. Flora of New Mexico, 1915, reprinted by J. Cramer, 1972.

Photographs:
1. Cream tips on prairie land with what looks like a bee, 20 June 2010.

2. Cream tips growing along the ranch road this week, 31 May 2012.

3. Partial cream tips seed head, 12 June 2011.

4. Cream tips near the far arroyo this past winter, 4 March 2012.

5. Cream tips a year ago near the far arroyo, when drought persisted and temperatures were more normal, 30 May 2011.

6. Cream tips near the far arroyo a week later, 6 June 2011.

7. White cream tips growing along the highway near Jaconita, 2 May 2012.

8. Hopi tea growing along the local road, 19 June 2011.

9. Cream tips root exposed by strong waters moving through the far arroyo last summer, 28 August 2011; the plant survived and later winds recovered it with fresh sand.

10. Cream tips with what looks like a bee on prairie land, 4 July 2010.

Yuccas

Weather: Lucy Brown weather, with drying winds sent to punish every plant that dared grow or bloom after the winter’s snow; last rain 5/13/12; 14:21 hours of daylight today.

Friday smoke from the Gila Wilderness fires arrived with winds that were gusting to 30 miles an hour in Santa Fé. Humidity levels got down to 6% there. Yesterday the humidity levels were fractionally better, the winds much worse, up to 48 mph, and the smoke came in before sundown.

The weather bureau (NOAA) doesn’t report on Española, so you decide which information applies best by the direction of the winds - south it’s Santa Fé, west it’s Los Alamos.

What’s blooming in the area: Catalpas, wild pink, Persian yellow, Dr. Huey and other hybrid roses, Japanese honey suckle, silver lace vine, Spanish broom, bearded iris nearly gone, yuccas, red hot poker, datura, donkey tail spurge, sweet pea, alfalfa, purple clover, blue perennial salvia, yellow flowered yarrow, brome grass; buds on Virginia creeper, daylily.

Cherries available from roadside vendors.

Beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, Russian olive, tamarix, sandbar willow, hedgehog cactus, four-wing saltbush, yuccas, fernleaf globemallow, cheese mallow, western stickseed, bractless cryptantha, alfilerillo, tumble mustard, purple mat flower, gypsum phacelia, stick leaf, tufted white evening primrose, scarlet bee blossom, blue gilia, white and pink bindweeds, nits and lice, oxalis, wild licorice, scurf and bush peas, loco, sweet sand verbena, English and woolly plantains, silver leaf nightshade, horse tail, flea bane, plain’s paper flower, goat’s beard, cream tips, strap leaf and golden hairy asters, native dandelion; needle, rice, June and three awn grasses; buds on prickly pear, showy milkweed.

In my yard, looking east: Peony, Bath pinks, snow-in-summer, small leaved soapwort, Jupiter’s beard, Maltese cross, sea pink, coral bells, pink evening primrose, oriental poppy, winecup mallow, Rose Queen salvia, purple clover; buds on hollyhock, baby’s breath.

Looking south: Rugosa, floribunda and miniature roses, raspberries, beauty bush, Dutch clover.

Looking west: Chives, vinca, blue flax, Siberian and Seven Hills Giant catmints, baptisia, Johnson’s Blue geranium; buds on Husker and purple beardtongues, sea lavender, Rumanian sage.

Looking north: Black locust, privet, golden spur columbine, hartweig evening primrose, chocolate flower, coreopsis; buds on blanket flower, anthemis, Mexican hat.

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

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Gold finches, geckos, orange paisley butterfly, bees, hornets, harvester and small black ants.


Weekly update: The day of the hedgehog, the year of the yucca. The near desert plants took last summer’s monsoons and last winter’s snows as signs of grace. What’s happened since has just been one of those things they endure.

Thursday and Friday, two hedgehog cacti bloomed in my yard. The last time I saw them was July 19 of 2008 and before that June 27 of 2003. The volunteers may have bloomed other times, unseen, but they definitely are sporadic.


Yuccas are much more reliable, blooming roughly the same time every year, except of course for those times like last year’s drought when they pass. The one favored in yards is the broad leafed Yucca baccata associated with the bases of mountains and Santa Fé canyon. The leaves get thick and curve ever so slightly to make room for large stalks that rarely rise much above the leaves. It was blooming this year mid April.


The one just coming into bloom, Yucca recurvifolia, has softer leaves, more like an iris or red hot poker and florets on tiny stems that allow them to hang like bells. This is not native, but comes from the southeastern United States.


Everyone knows, but few grow the tall Yucca elata. The roots of the southern New Mexico native are large and hard to transplant, and so they tend to be grown in front of commercial establishments where backhoes are not intrusions. One woman told me they were called century plants because they bloomed so rarely.


Those that grow wild are more elusive. When they’re brought into town where they get more water, the members of the agave family get as large as the broad leafed cousins. They’ve been blooming for a few weeks now.


Out on the dry grass lands, the plants are smaller, the straight, narrow leaves more often a faded green with fewer of the loose fibers found on the broad leafed ones.


Like the others, Yucca glauca, is a tease. It sends up a narrow blooming stalk, then pauses a week before opening a few lower florets.


By the time the middle ones are open, the lower ones already are dying. Before the top has bloomed, the middle flowers are gone and fruits are appearing below.


If you want to see the individual, downward facing florets, you must get very close, something the sharp edged leaves discourage.


Well you may ask, is this all there is, after a year without blooming, after years of browned out leaves, a stalk that looks ratty before it’s done blooming, and leaves a dried gray carcass?

The woman who called the one a century plant was waiting for the narrow leafed native to burst on her daily commute to town from Velarde, for she knows they, like everything in New Mexico, do well more often than once a hundred years. You just have to wait.


The winds can’t last forever. Mañana will be better.


Notes:
Wooton, Elmer O. and Paul C. Standley. Flora of New Mexico, 1915, reprinted by J. Cramer, 1972.

Photographs:
1. Tall Yucca elata blooming outside the Santa Clara casino, 17 May 2012.

2. Hedgehog cactus blooming wild in my yard Thursday, 24 May 2012.

3. Broad leafed Yucca baccata blooming in a yard down the road, 19 April 2012.

4. Weeping Yucca recurvifolia blooming outside a commercial building in Española Thursday, 24 May 2012.

5. Close up of above Yucca recurvifolia flowers, 24 May 2012.

6. Narrow leafed Yucca glauca blooming near a ditch spillway on Santa Clara land, 9 May 2012.

7. Yucca glauca blooming in a yard in town, 10 May 2012, with one plant in full bloom and another with just the bud stalks.

8. Yucca glauca growing on dry Santa Clara land, 19 April 2012; only some of these bloomed.

9. Close up of Yucca glauca stalk in my garden, 17 May 2012; plant was purchased from a nursery.

10. Yucca glauca before it’s done blooming in my garden with good and bad florets this past Thursday, 24 May 2012

11. Close up of Yucca gluaca floret in my garden, 20 May 2012.

12. Another variety of tall yucca, being cared for in a garden near the village, 14 April 2012. Yucca schottii, a cross between elata and baccata, grows to the southwest in Hidalgo County and adjacent Arizona.

13. The same yuccas in bloom Thursday, 24 May 2012.

Sweet Sand Verbena

Weather: Rain last weekend, followed by sun and winds determined to take it back; last rain 5/13/12; 14:12 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming in the area: Catalpas,wild pink, Persian yellow, Austrian Copper, Dr. Huey and other hybrid roses, pyracantha, snowball, purple flowered locust, alfalfa, Spanish broom, silver lace vine, bearded iris, yuccas, red hot poker, peony, datura, donkey tail spurge, sweet pea, blue perennial salvia, yellow flowered yarrow.

One person’s corn is about 8" high.

Beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, Russian olive, tamarix, four-winger saltbush, yuccas, fernleaf globemallow, western stickseed, bractless cryptantha, alfilerillo, hoary cress, tumble and purple mustards, purple mat flower, gypsum phacelia, stick leaf, tufted white evening primrose, scarlet bee blossom, blue gilia, bindweed, nits and lice, oxalis, wild licorice, scurf and bush peas, pale trumpets, sand verbena, woolly plantain, flea bane, plain’s paper flower, goat’s beard, cream tips, native dandelion; needle, rice, June, three awn and cheat grasses; moss; new growth on prickly pear.

As soon as the storms passed through and left some rain, the biological crust became active in my yard. On Monday morning, my neighbor’s yard was a silvery sheet of two inch high pigweed. Lamb’s quarter germinated soon after.

In my yard, looking east: Bath pinks, snow-in-summer, small leaved soapwort, Jupiter’s beard, sea pink, coral bells, pink evening primrose, oriental poppy, winecup mallow, pink salvia; buds on hollyhock, baby’s breath.

Looking south: Rugosa and miniature roses, raspberries, beauty bush, Dutch clover; buds on floribunda roses.

Looking west: Skunk bush, vinca, blue flax, catmints, baptisia, Johnson’s Blue geranium; buds on chives, purple beardtongue.

Perennial four o’clock broke through on Tuesday morning, a few days after rain finally reached it.

Looking north: Fragrant black locust, privet, golden spur columbine, chocolate flower; buds on blanket flower, coreopsis, Moonshine yarrow.

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

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, chickadees, hummingbirds, skinny tan snake with darker markings, geckos, lady bugs, bees, cabbage, black, sulfur and orange butterflies with brown paisley markings, hornets, harvester and small black ants.

Weekly update: In Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, T. S. Eliot tells us “a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.”

“First of all, there's the name that the family use daily” and then ‘There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter.”

For plants these correspond roughly to the Latin names used by botanists like Abronia fragrans and the commonplace ones like sweet sand verbena and prairie snowball.

But, Eliot says, there’s something far more important to keeping a cat’s “tail perpendicular” and his “whiskers spread wide” and that’s

“The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.”

I’m not enough of a new ager to devine what plants think, but I do know, for plants I’ve discovered on my own, without aid from some adult, I have private names, the ones I used before I was corrected. Even now, with sand verbena, I revert to things like allium head


or spoon leaves


when I come upon it in an unexpected location because adult onset knowledge isn’t as instantaneously recoverable as that acquired as a child.

The problem of names go much deeper, extends to every piece of a plant. I may contemplate the sand verbena’s flower cluster, but a botanist, tsk tsk, will remind me that, like bougainvillea and other members of the four o’clock family, the inflorescences have no actual petals.

Bracts form a pale pink tinged cap that opens to reveal any number of long white tubes that flare into five fluted points called limbs.


The structure’s more obvious when the flowers dry.


The fragrant night bloomer ranges through the great plains and intermontane region from Montana and North Dakota south to Chihuahua. To the west, it shades into Abronia elliptica in Utah; to the east it’s evolved into Abronia macrocarpa in Texas. Abronia bolackii, found only in San Juan County, is probably an intermediate form of elliptica.

The morphological variability that led some to classify elliptica as a form of the local wildflower exists here in its blooming habits. It seems to be closely related to the availability of moisture. When I first saw the white flowers in 2009 it was late August.

The next year, I saw them blooming in mid-May. The heads were dead by late July. After the monsoons began, new seedlings emerged in August with a few plants blooming.

Last year, the year after the drought and early May snow, the plants emerged in April, but there were no flowers. I didn’t see any new seedlings until October.

This year, the flowers began to appear the end of April, and the hillside where the biological crust is often active is now covered with flowers.


The past few weeks have seen a change in the winds from cool ones carrying moisture to hot, dry, water sucking ones. Yesterday, when I put my fingers around the rubbery, white taproot of one growing where it would be trampled in a path, there was no moisture in the top inches of sand.


When I tugged, there was some resistence from below, indicating the plant was still able to find water, but that its disappearance was probably a factor encourgaing so many to rush to seed in the past few days.

Ken Fern, who’s tried to grow the hairy perennial in England, says the long, darkly lustrous seeds are slow to germinate unless you peel their outer skin and soak them for 24 hours in warm water. Even then, it may take a month or two to see results at 59 degrees.

Such variability makes it difficult to interpret Leonora Curtin’s statement that new mothers who used it to stimulate the flow of milk gathered entire plants in August. Is that when they were green, blooming or completely dried?

She says local Spanish speaking women made a tea which was drunk every third morning, with the last dose on the ninth day, and that they rubbed some on their breasts while they were drinking the fluid. Michael Moore suggests others take it “frequently in small amounts.”

One thing they agree is the women called it lechuguilla, a term derived from sappy lettuce that Curtin said was also used for Indian hemp and Moore says was used for some agaves. The Ramah Navajo, who’ve used a cold lotion to treat sores or bathe their feet in a strong infusion, called it beetle food. The Zuñi, who eat the flowers to ease stomach pains, call it k'opwe:ah awan ak'wa:we.

Little lettuce, beetle food, stomach-ache medicine, like my spoon leaves, are clearly mnemonic names, but not likely the plant’s very own

“ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.”

Notes:
Ackerman, Jennifer and William F. Jennings. “The Genus Abronia (Nyctaginaceae) in Colorado, with Notes on Abronia bolackii in New Mexico,” Research Institute of Texas Journal 2:419-423:2008.

Camazine, Scott and Robert A. Bye. “A Study of the Medical Ethnobotany of the Zuni Indians of New Mexico,” Journal of Ethnopharmacology 2:365-388:1980.

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

Eliot, T. S. “The Naming of Cats” in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, 1939.

Fern, Ken. “Abronia fragrans - Nutt.” Plants for a Future Database; his source is Growing from Seed, a magazine edited by G. Rice.

Moore, Michael. Los Remedios, 1990.

Vestal, Paul A. The Ethnobotany of the Ramah Navaho, 1952.

Williamson, Paula S. and Charles R. Werth. “Levels and Patterns of Genetic Variation in the Endangered Species Abronia macrocarpa (Nyctaginaceae),” American Journal of Botany 86:293-301:1999.


Photographs:
1. Sand verbena bud, opening bud and fully opened head, growing on rise on bank of far arroyo, 23 August 2009.

2. Sand verbena heads, with unopened buds farther along the stem to the left; same general location, 25 September 2011.

3. Sand verbena leaves growing in area of active biological crust near far arroyo, 25 April 2010.

4. Sand verbena flower and bud clusters showing the long tubes in their caps, same general location, 19 May 2012.

5. Drying sand verbena head, same general location, 20 June 2010.
6. Sand verbena growing on a hill where the biological crust is active near the far arroyo, 9 May 2012.

7. Sand verbena root, 19 May 2012.

8. Small sand verbena plants with two flower heads in the area near the far arroyo, 19 May 2012; purple mat flower at lower left.

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.