Blog Relocation News

I’ve decided to move the blog from the free WordPress.com hosting service to a paid host called Bluehost. This blog has been a WordPress.com blog for nearly three years now, after my old self-hosted blog (which I had started in 2004 as “Rural Rambles”) expired in a tumult of bit entropy.

Having a WordPress blog on a separate host gives me a certain amount of freedom. I can edit any theme, and photos can be larger. I also will be able to directly embed audio and video in posts, an ability available to WordPress.com users only by paying for a site upgrade.

Naturally this entails more blog-management work for me, but I enjoy such geeky chores. For a while, at least, I’ll post links to new posts here, but not images. Here are the first two posts on the new blog:

Site Changes

Town Of The High Plains

As you can see, the new theme needs a bit of tweaking, but these are early days.

Bev and I have been driving from Arizona to New England these past few days. We stopped and camped near the Buffalo River in NW Arkansas, a beautiful area I haven’t visited in many years. A few trilliums were beginning to emerge in the beech/oak/pine woodlands there. Here’s a pristine example:

Larry

Desert Poppies

It’s easy to ignore common plants, just as it’s easy to ignore people en masse. The eye becomes surfeited easily and novelty is required to revive our flagging attentions.

This tendency can be fruitfully resisted, I’ve noticed. Magnification helps. I’ll shoot a few photos while out walking, then later find unexpected aesthetic delights lurking in the bundles of pixels disgorged into a USB cable.

The California Poppy is a common spring flower here in Bisbee. Our sub-species (Eschscholzia californica ssp. mexicana) is a strong clear yellow with just a hint of orange, unlike the orange-yellow form found in California. The plant grows from sidewalk cracks where there is sufficient sun. The foliage is a distinctive shade of blue-green. So far I’ve seen just two clumps in bloom, but I’ve noticed hundreds of plants girding their vegetative loins for the big reproductive push. The plants bloom sporadically for a month or two, but eventually the severity of the midsummer sun will sear the ferny foliage into green dust.

A couple of morning shots:

Larry

A Late Spring In Arizona

Phenology is an old-fashioned discipline, dependent as it is upon an observer staying in one place for several years. Who does that any more? I did for quite a few years, but for the time being I’m unmoored.

You could think of phenology as a blend of chronology, accounting, and natural history. It boils down to keeping records of when certain natural events happen each year in a certain place. The observer, of course, must be able to differentiate species of plant and animals; otherwise the records would be completely subjective and difficult to share with other record-keepers. Linnaeus’s wonderful idea lives on!

In the pre-computer era (most of human history) phenological observations were kept in notebooks. Aldo Leopold and his family wrote their observations in the day-squares of a large calendar, another common approach. A year-end task was transcribing those notes to a notebook so that the calendar could be disposed of.

I must confess that any phenological observations I make are a byproduct of photography. How fortunate that digital photographs, like all computer files, are intimately associated with their date of creation!

Here’s my slender contribution to Southeast Arizona phenology.

The desert spring is quite unlike those of northern climates. Many of the trees (including many oaks) are evergreen here, so there isn’t the dramatic budding, unfolding, and awakening I grew up with. Many of the plants here wait for the late-summer monsoon rains to make their growth. Still, there are a few spring ephemeral plants. One of them is the Golden Corydalis (Corydalis aurea), a beautiful and dainty plant closely related to the Dutchman’s Breeches and Bleeding Hearts common in Eastern woodlands and gardens.

I first saw and photographed this Corydalis last spring, and I had a vague idea or hunch that the flower bloomed earlier last year. Sometime in early March, I was certain, but only the existence of the photos I shot last year provided me with evidence of the flowering date. Here’s a close-up I shot last year on March 6th:

This year the plants waited two weeks longer to bloom; I shot these photos a couple of days ago, on March 19th:

Naturally I wonder about the possible reasons for the delay. We did have an unusually chill and snowy winter. Many spring ephemeral plants bloom when the soil has warmed sufficiently. Now I wish I had records for previous years!

Larry

Poppy Seeds

Last spring while driving from Illinois to Arizona I began to notice a peculiar plant along the highways. Starting in central Oklahoma what looked like thistles began to appear, but rather than the typical purplish-red star-burst thistle flowers, these plants had large flowers with papery white petals. I eventually learned that these prickly plants were in the genus Argemone, and that they are commonly known as Prickly Poppies.

The species I’ve become familiar with here in Arizona is Argemone pleiacantha, the Arizona or Southwestern Prickly Poppy. It is common in overgrazed rangeland and in other disturbed sites such as roadsides.

One day last month I happened to be hiking through some BLM grassland in the shadow of the Dragoon Mountains. The leased range-land didn’t seem too healthy. The remaining grass was mostly a species which cattle disdain, possibly because of the insidious augur-like seeds which seemed to delight in burrowing into socks. I encountered several withered prickly poppies in that stretch of level grassland, as cattle don’t like that plant either. The Argemone seedpods were open and I had my first encounter with the seeds. I knelt down, split open a few pods and examined the contents.

Prickly Poppies are in the Poppy Family (the Papaveraceae), so I wasn’t surprised to see that the seeds looked like the familiar culinary poppy seeds from plants in the genus Papaver. Argemone seeds are about twice as large, though, and have an interesting surface texture. Here’s a shot of a pod with its seeds spilled out into my palm, which bears abrasions from a struggle with an enormous thicket of thorny “Wait-a-minute” acacia shrubs. Cattle avoid those wicked shrubs too!

A closer view of the seeds, which taste like commercial poppy seeds:

It’s easy to ignore common roadside weeds, but we may as well get used to them as people and roads proliferate unchecked. I like to see rare native plants as well as the next amateur botanist, but I also enjoy the neglected but ecologically adaptable plants as well!

Larry

Chinaberry Appreciation

In general, I tend to favor native trees and plants, fellow organisms which evolved nearby. I hasten to add that my ancestors didn’t evolve anywhere near here; I assume that my DNA originated on another continent, but I enjoy the company of true natives wherever I might be.

When I’m living in a town I like to see the native plants which have managed to endure human occupation, but I also like to see the alien plants and trees which have managed to gain a foothold (roothold?). These are opportunistic plants which have found niches in the human-centered landscape, nooks and crannies where they thrive.

Here in the high desert environment of Bisbee, Arizona, a tree or plant has to be able to handle months without rain. Scattered throughout the town can be found various native trees which are accustomed to such environmental duress. The Desert Willow, a native hackberry, and the Arizona Cypress thrive here without irrigation. There are a few Arizona Sycamores downtown, but they need a bit of watering, as their native habitat is along the few Arizona rivers.

Most of the trees in Bisbee are aliens. The stinky and vigorous Ailanthus trees are common along lanes and alleys, as they are in most towns in this country. Bisbee residents call them Cancer Trees.

Another common alien tree comes from Asia; its native range is broad, all the way from India to China. The Chinaberry tree (Melia azedarach) is a member of the Mahogany Family. Most members of that family favor wet tropical environments, but the Chinaberry thrives here. This summer I’ve seen examples of the species every day, and I’ve watered a young Chinaberry in the yard:

The leaves are large and compound, and they have a glossy sheen which is rare in this desert environment. I’ve grown to appreciate those leaves, a welcome addition to the typical small gray-green leaves of the native trees and shrubs:

The Chinaberry tree bears small berries which are poisonous to humans but not to birds:

So here we have an alien tree which reproduces on its own in this harsh region, but doesn’t become a pest like the Ailanthus. The tree feeds the birds and contributes another texture to the built-up town landscape.

Larry

Misty Walk On Juniper Flats

Lately I’ve been wondering how the granite ridge Juniper Flats has responded to the monsoon rains. Juniper Flats is just a mile or so north of Bisbee, a quick drive, so Friday morning I drove through the Mule Pass Tunnel and headed up the steep and switch-backed road to the top of the Flats.

The road, with its frequent rock outcroppings, straightens out at the top of the ridge. There’s an area about two miles long and one-quarter mile wide which is reasonably flat. On the west side the drop down to Highway 80 is a sheer cliff, while on the other sides many canyons dissect the slopes.

I stopped for a while at a pull-off where I had camped for ten days back in May. Ephemeral monsoon flowers were in evidence, such as this modest narrow-leaved morning glory:

This is a plant in the Lily Family which I’ve not been able to identify; I saw it scattered among the stunted piñon pines and alligator junipers:

There are two high points at the north end of the flats, and these have been dedicated to modern communications. The existence of the cell phone towers on those eminences is the only reason the road up there is maintained. I drove to the access road which leads to the lower of the two tower complexes, parked, and walked up to the top. A view looking north:

As I looked westwards I noticed that while the San Pedro Valley was dimly visible, the clouds moving in obscured the normally-visible Huachua Mountains:

I clambered back down and drove a farther on to a dip between the two tower complexes. There was an unlocked gate barring access to a rough jeep trail which parallels a canyon I’d never explored. I parked again and slipped by the gate, which was cleverly counter-weighted by a chunk of granite enclosed by iron bands.

I encountered a piñon pine growing from a crevice in the granite, it’s squat trunk shielded by a profuse growth of Fairy Sword ferns:

The jeep trail became rougher and it was obvious that a jeep hadn’t been back along this path for several years. Granite boulders had fallen into the trail, but someone had gone to some effort once upon a time to establish the road, even building up the downhill side with rubble walls.

The trail came to an end at a green, built-up and leveled platform. Eighteen-inch concrete walls had been hand-poured on top of what must have been a slanting granite ledge, but for what purpose? It seemed like a lot of work to have done just to have a level spot for a picnic or campfire:

Spring seeps converged on this platform and the runoff joined other temporary watercourses draining from the heights. I could see down in the canyon that a temporary creek was flowing.

I jumped down from the anomalous platform and saw that traces of a crude road continued. I suspected that mines might have been the reason, as only the prospect of material gain could justify the labor that pushing that road along the slope must have involved.

Before I descended into the canyon I ended up seeing at least half-a-dozen mines, crude slots and holes blasted out of the granite, such as this one:

Piles of rotten mine timbers could be seen now and then:

The road petered out and I descended to the canyon bottom, expanses of granite shimmering with sheets of water. There was a thirty-foot drop-off, and presumably a trickling waterfall, but the water-worn stone was slick enough that I dared not venture too close to the edge:

I began to make my way upstream. A flash of red caught my eye, a flowering plant sheltered beneath a massive boulder:

A closer look revealed a species of Coral Bells, Huechera sanguinea. This was a new one for me and I enjoyed seeing it in its native habitat:

A close-up of a flower-cluster:

The vegetation around the creeklet began to close in on me as I ascended, and it became difficult to find my way around some of the pools. I began to feel confined and thought I’d make my way back up-slope to the relatively bare rock. Unfortunately I ended up in a thicket of dead and living manzanita. The weathered dead branches, with their elbow-like contortions, seemed to willfully impede my progress. Here’s another remnant of the mining days I found buried in the thicket. Perhaps an iron boiler?

During this past drought decade the canyon slopes around Bisbee have experienced a die-off of perhaps half of the manzanita trees. The dead trunks and branches will take many decades to decay. This seedling piñon pine seems determined to take over the photosynthetic duties in this particular spot of desert:

I gradually made my way through the clinging dead branches. Surely, I thought, I’d get to the typical open landscape before much longer! I happened to look up as I rested for a minute. I was surprised to see billowing plumes of mist being blown up the canyon, and I noticed that the temperature was dropping. A rainstorm in the morning is a rarity during the monsoon season, but it looked like some change in the weather was imminent. The mist obscuring the mountains was quite beautiful and I had to shoot some photos.

As I left the thicket behind I had to remind myself that getting wet was not going to hurt me, but the instinct to seek shelter as a storm approaches is a strong one. I was hoping to find the jeep trail but it eluded me. Then I saw a most peculiar structure perched on a ledge, and there appeared to be no road or trail allowing access from the outside world. It was a cleft in the granite roofed over with soldered copper sheets, and it had two skylights! The edges of the copper roof had been sealed to the irregular contours of the rock. The entrance to the structure was surrounded by a high fence:

I noticed an electrical cable snaking its way down to the building, perhaps originating at the cell phone tower complex high above. From a rock-face above the structure a 3/4″ iron pipe protruded. A standard hose-faucet was attached to it and a coil of weathered green hose lay just below. Did someone once live here?

The mist was clinging to the opposite ridge-top in a most appealing way:

I finally came up to the jeep-trail just one hundred feet from my truck. I sat in the truck, eating some bread and cheese, and watched distant showers descending upon the Huachuca Mountains. As I drove back down from the flats I pulled over at one switch-back and watched a rain shower advancing across the San Jose Mountains in the nearby Mexican state Sonora

Ten minutes later I was home. It’s nice to have such an area to explore just outside of town!

Larry

Geraniums Everywhere

Members of the genus Geranium are commonly encountered; they can easily be distinguished by their dissected palmate leaves and weirdly elongated seed-pods, which due to a fancied resemblance causes several species to be known as cranesbills. I have long been familiar with Midwest woodland species of Geranium, such as the common Wood Geranium or Alum Root, which some refer to as the Old Maid’s Nightcap: Geranium maculatum.

Here in central New Mexico I’ve been seeing profuse growths of another species, one with a very spiny and elongated seed-pod. You might say that the pod is a caricature of the actual bill of a crane. I’m not sure of the species, but suspect that it’s a native of Europe that has found a new home in the US, as have so many other Europeans. Some cranesbill pods growing in front of stones in a gravelly campground:

Frankly the pods are more interesting and striking than the modest pale-purple flowers, though these can have some charm when growing en masse:

Larry

Goons Of The Dragoons

I’m sitting at the kitchen table looking out at whirling drifts of snow, an unusual sight here in Cochise County, Arizona. The mountain slopes on the opposite side of the canyon are obscured from view:

An apricot tree next to the front door was in full bloom yesterday, but I imagine that the blossoming will resume in a day or so:

My thoughts wander back to memories of a hike Bev and I took a few days ago. We drove up to the Dragoons again, a range of contorted granite mountains which once served as a stronghold and refuge for the Apache chief Cochise and his tribespeople.

The sky was just perfect that day, with radiating spokes of high cirrus clouds providing a fitting backdrop for the rocky slopes and peaks. A few examples of the twisted shapes granite can assume when given sufficient time and heat:

The path we followed wound its way in. I would like to see one of those famed Southwestern flash floods someday, but from higher ground! The granite supported little vegetation, just the usual alligator junipers, scrub oaks, and piñon pines spaced a comfortable distance apart. Two more views:

The collie Sage led the way as we approached a peculiar pile of rocks. The heap bore an uncanny resemblance to some sort of squat sentient creature, like a species of stony troll. A shiver ran up my spine:

It was quite a remarkable illusion, but obviously just the product of my overactive imagination. I couldn’t help but think, though, of some Apache legends I had read about, dark tales of stony demons lurking in the local canyons. I was distracted from these disturbing thoughts by an encounter with a new flowering plant. What a charming sight! It was a yellow-flowered legume with contrasting reddish buds. The clump was growing amidst yucca and grasses. I liked the way one pair faced the camera while the other seemed transfixed by the sight of something off towards the right, perhaps the dog:

Once I was home again I determined that the plant is a species of Lotus, a close relative of the alien forage legume Lotus corniculatis or Birds-foot Trefoil. I think these Lotus greenei plants are much prettier, although I admit their native status predisposes me towards them.

We came across a boulder-field which required us to squeeze through crevices. Cave-like enclosures between the car-sized rocks probably serve as impromptu shelters for coatimundis and such-like small mammals. Here’s a scene which might appear to be an appalling example of animal abuse, but Bev really wasn’t punching out Sage:

We were walking by yet another tastefully-arranged grouping of boulders when Bev saw a Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly nectaring at a clump of white flowers surrounded by the threatening curved leaves of Shindagger plants, a small species of Agave. I endured a few pokes from the Shindaggers in an effort to squat down and take a closer look at the five-petaled white flowers:

Later, after I had failed to identify the plant, Bev was able to make a positive ID. The plant bears an unlikely common name, Bigelow’s Bristlehead, and it’s a member of the Aster or Composite family. The Latin binomial is Carphochaete bigelovii.

I was standing near a large round boulder when I heard a faint rumbling reminiscent of the sound of a mild earthquake. I also could feel the stone pavement I stood upon trembling. Sage whimpered.

Bev said with alarm, “Look at those outcroppings up ahead! They’re moving!”

A thorny ocotillo shoot extended across my path, as if to warn me against proceeding any farther:

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Two of the enormous piles of granite boulders were moving across our path several hundred yards away. We decided to give them a wide berth and took a circuitous route back to the van. It always pays to be prudent when encountering ancient troll-like rock demons!

Larry, who has been known to stretch the truth at times…

Showdown In Rucker Canyon

A couple of days ago Bev and I drove north and east to the Chiricahua Mountains, a range of volcanic origin (some years ago) which is contained within one unit of the Coronado National Forest. We walked a few miles up Rucker Canyon, a beautiful spot enhanced by the lack of other people there.

A clear stream makes its way through a very rocky bed at the bottom of the canyon, and large Ponderosa Pines and Arizona Cypresses shaded the trail and were a balm to the eye.

Bev and I both took many photos that afternoon. After we got home, and after we had each uploaded the photo files to our respective computers, I remarked, “I brought home some nice images! I’ll have to work up a blog post about the walk.”

Bev said, “Well, I took some good photos too, and I was going to write a blog post!”

I replied, “I suppose we could both post about the same walk… I’ve never done that before.”

“We could make a contest out of the dual posts! Whoever gets the most comments wins!”, said Bev with a mischievous smile.

“Hmmm… competitive blogging. We could each provide links to the other’s post. If we included a funny Youtube video in each post they might go viral! Millions of viewers would read our stuff! Next we’d be appearing on the morning and late-night TV shows, and then they’d make a new event for the Olympics out of the new sport!”

Bev smiled wryly. “Yeah, Larry, fat chance of that happening, and truth to tell I don’t think I would enjoy such attention.”

The idea of a contest was just a joke, as neither of us are very competitive, but it occurred to me that if the two of us wrote parallel accounts of the same walk the results might be illuminating and interesting. The differences between our observations might highlight the very different ways in which we perceive what I’m fairly certain is the same world. So here’s my account:

We drove north and east from Bisbee through dry rangeland, the highway crossed occasionally by cattle-guards welded from old railroad rails. The ranches we drove through occupy the vast Sulphur Springs Valley, which extends from down in Mexico up into southern Arizona about fifty miles. It’s mostly flat scrubby desert with occasional areas of irrigated agriculture. Several mountain ranges rim the valley.

We turned off towards the east on a straight blacktop increasingly bordered by outcrop-capped hills. This area, which featured extensive patches of prickly pear cactus, is known as Leslie Canyon. The Chiricuaha Mountains, some of them snow-capped, loomed ever larger in front of us. Our destination was Rucker Canyon, a river-cut gash extending deep into the heart of the Chiricuahas. Two scenes from Leslie Canyon:

The first photo above shows a Soaptree Yucca, a characteristic sight in the area. The Apaches used the sap and pulp to make a soap-like substance. In the second photo notice how neatly the triangular wedge of granite fits into its socket. It took millions of years for that fit to get to be just right, a comfortable sliding fit.

We parked at a deserted campground next to the rocky stream which had carved the canyon and ate bread along with garbonzo/cauliflower salad.

As we walked up the trail which ran along the shallow stream, signs of a wildfire which happened last year were increasingly evident. Many cypress and juniper trunks were charred but the fire must have raced through the canyon quickly, as few trees had succumbed to the flames. The tall Ponderosa Pines seemed to have weathered the fire especially well due to thick plates of reddish bark characteristic of the species. Here’s a shot of a large Ponderosa Pine, followed by another photo of beads of sap which the heat had drawn from the living flesh of another pine:

I began to notice lupine plants emerging from beds of pine needles. The leaves were just flawless and they seemed to gleam with good health in the morning sun, plants perfectly suited to their place on this earth. Here’s a crop from one of my photos; click on the photo below if you want to see a high-resolution version of the entire uncropped frame. I’m experimenting with Dropbox as a simple way of storing full-size photos without using much of my WordPress disk-space allotment. Let me know if you would like to see more high-resolution versions of my photos.

I tend to get all involved with macro and cropped shots — I just realized that I haven’t shown the actual stream! Truth to tell, Bev’s stream shots are better — we each have our own strong points!

A recursive shot of Bev taking a picture of me — I can only hope that she doesn’t post the goofy shot of me she came home with!

Two more, and then I’m done with this post. I get weary of cropping and scaling photos sometimes! Here is a stream-side young tree which happened to germinate and grow in a rather confined and dark spot:

And here is a photo of the bark of a large Arizona Cypress tree. I was glad to make its acquaintance!

Take a look at the photo-laden post Bev wrote about the walk — yes, we were on the same walk!

Bev’s Showdown

I don’t think she’s quite done with her post, so check back a bit later if the link doesn’t work.

Larry

March In Southeast Arizona

I’m still not used to the climate here, just five miles north of the Mexican border. This time of year the nights are still chill, with an occasional light frost, but spring is indubitably here. As evidence I report a sighting of an ephemeral spring flower in the Bleeding Heart Family, Corydalis aurea. I found several plants blooming a couple of days ago along the driveway leading to the house. The morning light seemed to flow into the tubular whale-like corollas of the flowers, inflating them and making them buoyant:

The plant is also known as Golden Smoke. Notice how the flower’s stem is attached to the middle of the corolla, giving the inflorescence a pleasing zig-zag effect. The flowers are about an inch long.

Yesterday I was wandering across steep canyon slopes with Sage, the sure-footed collie. I saw patches of an inconspicuous gray-green plant with tiny flowers growing from the sand and granite talus. The plant looked to be a member of the Brassicacea, or Mustard Family, as it had slender spine-like seed-pods radiating from the flower-stalks, very like the pods on alien wild mustard plants which will soon create broad swaths of yellow blossoms in cultivated fields.

Once I got home I had trouble identifying the plant, but I finally narrowed it down to the genus Descurainia. The plant I had seen has white and pink blossoms, while most species of Descurainia have yellow flowers. The leaves are diagnostic, though, and I’m certain the plant belongs to that genus. The flower stalks aren’t especially photogenic, but the leaves have a pleasing fern-like shape:

Plants belonging to the genus Descurainia are also known as Tansy Mustards due to the resemblance of the leaves to those of the unrelated Tansy plant, a Eurasian alien.

I must confess I enjoy the company of the straw men which I occasionally press into service here at the blog. I can’t help but think of that classic scene in “The Wizard Of Oz” in which the Scarecrow, with an irritated look on his fabric face, stuffs straw into his empty trousers so that he can stand up. Why, here’s one of my straw men, getting here in the nick of time:

The straw man exclaims rudely, “What the hell’s the difference? Plants are just background for the truly significant dramas of human lives — like mine, for instance!”

I’m going to have to impose a cover charge here in order to keep out the chaffy riff-raff! I reply, my temper held in check:

“Maintaining an interest in the elder inhabitants of this land tends to have a salutory effect upon us, narcissistic humans that we are. We are recent occupiers of this favored continent, and I feel that it is incumbent upon us to have some respect for the original colonizers, whether they be plants, fungi, or tetrapods.”

The straw man mutters, “Humph!” and the wind catches his constituent straw, dispersing it as a thin mulch upon the desert floor. All that remains is a pile of patched clothes.

But I digress. Back to the discoveries of one canyon-slope walk:

I happened across a burled and contorted stump, the remnants of a scrubby oak tree. Decomposition is slow in this land of little rain, as fungi need moisture to do their work. The stump was very likely decades old. I was struck by the whorled patterns of growth rings on one exposed face of the stump. The patterns reminded me of a polished rock-face:

The Soap-tree Yucca is an ungainly plant which looks as if it were designed by Dr. Suess. As the tree-like succulent grows the plant forms a trunk festooned with the ragged stumps of the saw-toothed leaves of years past. The current growth, an elegant starburst of slender leaves, contrasts sharply with the ragged mess underneath. When this species is grown in towns people tend to groom the plants, neatly clipping off the dead leaves and leaving a pattern like that on the skin of a pineapple.

Here’s a Soap-tree yucca which fell or was blown over. The long trunk is now flat on the ground, but the growing rosette at the end, which was once the top, gamely survives:

A pleasant walk indeed, but I confess I bring home with me numerous stick-tight seeds which cling to my clothes and require removal — not everyone likes finding prickly little seeds in unexpected places!

My next post will consist of images and commentary stemming from a walk up Rucker Canyon, a cleft in the western slopes of the Chiricuaha Mountains.

Larry