I love following the drainages out of the mountains and across the deserts, observing all the plants and animals that follow them as well. Do I always tell you that? Having wild turkeys come out of the nearby mountains and wander by our little homestead reminded me to talk about the magic of canyons and arroyos that cross our deserts. The reintrodu…

When the Mesquitey family lived near Tucson I worked in a crazy wonderful nursery that was at the base of A-Mountain (Sentinel Peak) right next to the Santa Cruz River. It was there that I fell in love with the native Fremont Wolfberry, so much so that we propagated it at the nursery and I ended up writing song called When the Wolfberries Bloom on …

I hope you’re getting a chance to do some wandering this spring…maybe your backyard or a nearby park or even out in the wild. I owe you an episode about pale wolfberry (Lycium pallidum) and I’ll do that, but this bright little annual that looks so much like a dandelion is abundant around out little homestead this April. I like the common name Fendl…

Seems every few years I revisit this old poem/song of mine. It’s a true story. Oh, and the band I was in back in those Tucson days was The Dusty Chaps. The photos are mine of some of the desert that blew my mind back then and still does.Bởi Petey Mesquitey

It is the ground dried fruit of Rhus coriaria that’s used in cooking throughout the Middle East. The fruit of our southwestern species of sumac is almost always used as a refreshing tart drink and you come across local names like Apache kool-aid, sumac-aid or Rhusade. And, it has been used that way by indigenous folks for centuries. Reem Kassis is …

Penstemons are in the Figwort Family, Scrophulariaceae. There are about 250 species and the majority of them, 99.9999%…okay I dunno, but there is only one other species somewhere in Eastern Asia… are found in North America and most of those are in the western United States. Lucky us and yay! Oh, and here is a fun factoid: It was botanist David Mitc…

We love finding grinding holes in rocks when out traipsing in the wild. One of our favorite destinations when we lived in Tucson was the Coyote Mountains west of town. There was spot in one of the canyons where we found grinding holes and it became a family and friends gathering place. “Let’s meet at grinding hole rock.” You can find grinding holes…

Quercus toumeyi Arizona Sonora border foothills oak The photos are mine.Bởi Petey Mesquitey

I was mistaken about Arivaca’s vulture celebration. It is not early March, but later in the month. Apologies to them, but hey, the good news is that you can celebrate turkey vultures all of March. Yay! We’ll have some small flora and fauna spring celebrations at our home. Your home too? Hey, check your very local listings for flora and fauna spring…

I have so many memories of hikes or journeys in southern Arizona that include walnut trees…sometimes up high in the mountains or as I mentioned in this episode, a riparian canyon cutting into the Sonoran Desert. They’re part of the flora and fauna that make the borderlands so diverse, beautiful and occupied, not vacant. The photos are mine and take…

The etymology of the word mistletoe is all over the place and has been traced to Old English, Middle English, Anglo Saxon and old German…a mix of all of the above. I do like the meaning “dung on a twig.” And listen, mistletoe is really an excellent plant for birds, so why don’t native plant nurseries offer Phoradedron californicum for your ironwood…

When I used to give talks I would always show photos and talk about our regional yucca species; Yucca elata, Y. baccata and Yucca madrensis… Yucca madrensis, by the way is the former Yucca schottii, but here’s what’s cool about this resident of the Madrean Evergreen Woodlands; it’s pollinated by a different moth species than Y. baccata or Y. elata.…

I read in HORTUS THIRD that there are about 150 species of Vaccinium found in “cool temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere,” 40 of which are found in North America. In this episode I rattle off some of the common names I came across, but think of all the hundreds of names indigenous peoples must have given to these shrubs. Pretty cool. I love…

Anyone who lives in groundhog country will have a woodchuck tale or two to tell. Growing up in Kentucky I sure did. The first piece I wrote for a poetry class I took at the University of Arizona in 1969 was about groundhogs. I’ll spare you. Oh, and my friend Russell Lowes shot me a note regarding marmots in Arizona. A few years ago while backpackin…

This is an episode about hearing my heart beat. I initially was going to talk about the noise made by ORVs, ATVs, SUVs and pickup trucks out in the deserts and hills. I fall in the “pickup truck” category. Don’t want you thinking I’m a holier than thou sorta guy…ha! Anyway, guess I’ll pontificate about all that another time. You’re welcome. So, thi…

Surely I’m not the only person who sits around reading field guides by a warm wood stove. And our field guides do end up in the truck headed out to the borderlands. Hey, Jim Koweek and I met in 1980, hmm, maybe 1981, but yeah, it is an old friendship. And listen, besides Sonoran Desert Plant ID for Everyone, Jim is also the author of Grassland Plan…

I grew and sold California buckthorn for several years. Early on I sold it wholesale to other nurseries, but I also sold it at Farmers Markets in Cochise County. I’m a terrible plant promoter I guess and the plant never really got popular, at least in my circles. It’s ironic because in California there are some named cultivars (nativars folks like …

The photos are mine. Coatimundis can make you pretty happy…Bởi Petey Mesquitey

I originally wrote and recorded the song Road Across the Grassland in 2005…well, maybe a little before, but listen, there really is a dirt road that starts about three miles from our home and that road will take you across grassland, through desert scrub and woodland and right to the Mexican border. I love it…I’m guessing you knew that. Thank you s…

If I had wobbled up any higher on that rocky slope I may or may have not fallen by a ragged rock flower. It ranges from 1,800 ft to 4,500 ft in elevation across southern Arizona. I found a wonderful line in the plant description found at the site SEINet; “An unassuming plant with attractive flowers, often growing in out of the way places.” Sweet….a…

There are sixty-five to seventy species of Fraxinus found around the world, so of course ancient Romans had a name for ash trees. Carl Linnaeus, the king of binomial nomenclature, used the classical Latin name fraxinus as the genus for ash trees and one hundred years later the American botanist John Torrey gave the species name velutina to the tree…

What a fun discovery in the desert east of Douglas, Arizona. There is just something about these large spinescent shrubs in the buckthorn family, Rhamnaceae. I love Condalia warnockii and friends who frequent the western deserts of Arizona love Condalia globosa…okay, me too. And now I’m adding Condalia correllii to my favorite spinescent shrub list…

Leslie Newton Goodding had a busy career. It was when he worked for the U. S. Department of Agriculture that he collected the type specimen for the willow jabbered about in this episode. It was the American botanist Carleton Roy Ball, a Salix specialist (geek), who honored Goodding with the species name. One of the things that caught my attention w…

All the plants and their communities I was excitedly jabbering about are in the borderlands year round, but the sandhill cranes are only here for the winter months. You can google sandhill cranes and come up with some places to see them out in Cochise County. Here’s a few places where we look for them: the Whitewater Draw is probably the best known…

When Ms. Mesquitey and I gather acorns to plant we bag up hundreds, but I can never resist nabbing a few if I see some still on an oak…thus the acorns in my pocket. It would be hard to go into a woodland or forest in southeastern Arizona and not see acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) or Mexican jays (Aphelocoma ultramarina)…they are quite …