Rattlesnake Weed

When we talk about beautiful flowers we can only express what appears so from our own limited perspective. Our eyes can see things that are only so small. We often describe those things that are small for our eyes as "diminutive". A relative term certainly. But by being so a thing falls out of those lists of objects, and here we are talking about flowers, that may or may not be beautiful but we just can't see them well enough to know.  "Its flowers are diminutive."  End of discussion. There is a plant that I have seen thousands of times as I walk the pinyon-juniper woodlands around here. I've stepped over it. I've no doubt stepped on it as well.  It grows along roadsides and in other disturbed areas throughout the woodlands and grasslands.  If you choose to one day look it up just for the heck of it you find that it is in the spurge family with the common name of rattlesnake weed.  When I first saw this name I assumed this low flat-growing plant had that name because it was close to the ground just like a rattlesnake.

The fact is though that the plant received its name because of the belief that it could be used to cure snake bite.  From what I understand the plant if ingested as a tea or just eaten acts as an emetic. This reaction was felt to have a curative benefit to the snakebite victim. I guess absent of any local emergency room with anti-venom this was at least doing something for the poor bitten person back in the old days.

Well here is a the normal view of rattlesnake weed taken as it appears to the unaided eye as you stroll through the countryside:

If those are flowers down there the certainly are diminutive.










Perhaps if we were to bend over a little to improve our view:

Well I guess they are flowers.   Still pretty small but not too noticeable.  However, if we get out our hand lense and really zoom in :

Perspective is everything. Diminutive, showy, beautiful, non-descript. How can you describe them? How should you describe them?  How do you see them?  The Grand Canyon is not far from here.  Are these flowers that should grace the Grand Canyon?  They do. How do they compare?  How do we see the small and the grand?  Should our response to this tiny blossom  be any less than the grandest canyon?  It is.  But maybe if we think on it. Ponder the reality of it. Maybe we'll see the universe in the flower as well.

Summer is here

Summer is here on Cedar Mountain. Hot and dry.  Where was spring. Do we even have spring around here.  It was only about a week ago that the morning low was 34 degrees.  Now we are in that hot spell that always precedes our summer rains of July and August.  Old-timers have told me "It has to get hot before it can rain." Actually there is some truth to this as the "heat low" that develops in the desert at this time of year is what draws the moisture in from the south to feed our summer rains.  This is when the newly sprouted plants in our garden are really tested. These tender domesticated things want to just shrivel up and blow away in the hot, dry wind. The native plants know what to do. They are still maintaining themselves on what's left of the spring moisture in the soil.  But they don't try to grow much. They are waiting.  Some like the globemallow have done a little flowering but the hot and dry have told them to wait.

Here's one that has a couple of flowers but if you look close you can see dozens of buds ready to open (or not) if and when we get the summer rains.

There's a common late summer blooming wildflower that the local rancher's call tallow-weed that sprouts in the spring if we have good spring moisture.  They will grow into June as long as the moisture holds up in the soil.  Then they stop.  Waiting for the summer rains. They can survive quite a few weeks of dry through June and into July.  If the rains come anywhere near on schedule (first half of July) they will have mostly survived and will continue to grow and bloom.  Otherwise, if the rains are late they start to die out.  The later the rains the fewer the blooming tallow-weed.  Here is how the tallow-weed look today baking in the hot June sun:

They can hang in like this for a long time once they have become established.  We have not had any moisture in about 4 weeks and as long as the summer rains come in the next 2 weeks most of these plants will make it.  But what would have happened if we had not gotten enough spring moisture to get them started?  Well back in the late 90's and early 00's we had a terrible drought.  We didn't have the right conditions for tallow-weed for many years.  But as soon as those conditions returned out popped the tallow-weed in abundance. Filling all the open spaces in the pinyon-juniper woodland with a carpet of sulphur-yellow blooms.

Our climate here is all about uncertainty.  Our native plants have adapted to it. We may not see them or not see their blooms every year but they have learned (or their genes have learned) what to do no matter what.  Our common cactus species are particularly well-adapted.  Take the pin-cushion cactus.  A common small round cactus which sets its flower buds in the spring if we get good snow that hangs around into April.  But the actual blooming doesn't occur until late June.

 Above is a pincushion I caught blooming yesterday and to the right is a prickly pear that's been blooming for a few days now.  It seems to have similar requirements as the pincushion and blooms about the same time.  Both species are adapted to long drought periods where they may not bloom at all. 





One of our local barberry species called aljerita has the same requirements for late spring snowmelt as the pincushion cactus.  The aljerita is blooming like crazy right now.  Here is recent picture:

What happens if we don't get our winter snow?  If we have a dry winter, the aljerita, which normally sheds a few leaves prior to adding new growth in the spring, will drop all of its leaves.  It looks dead. But when the rain finally comes, it resurrects itself. It has learned patience with our frustrating climate.

This is how you adapt to uncertainty.  This is how you survive in the Southwest.  You give something up one year or two years then you gain it back and then some in the good year. It's how we do it and coyotes do it and all opportunistic, adaptable species. As a last resort though, we can move. The plants are stuck and have learned to adapt to this extreme variability.  I am in awe at this.

Cedar Mountain

The focus of this blog is the tremendous diversity of this portion of the Colorado Plateau.  Grand Canyon to the north and the Mogollon Rim to the south with unsure boundaries east and west.  It's an area that gets millions of visitors every year but is only really explored by a few.  Almost everyone who comes here has one goal.  Get to the Grand Canyon.  This is a worthy goal. There is no place like Grand Canyon. I love it. But this highland area of forest, woodland, and prairie continues to astound me in what it reveals.  I have spent a lot of time out "in" it and I want to put some of those observations here. Hopefully, they will give a taste for this landscape and its beauty but mostly it's variety and what we can learn from it. On a recent walk on Cedar Mountain here are some things I encountered.

This is a banana yucca sending up a flower stock on the south slope of Cedar Mtn. The date is May 27.  A little later this year due to our cold winter and spring.  The number of yucca that bloom in a given year is related to the winter/spring moisture conditions. This year we had about average winter precip though maybe a little more in the form of snow but a somewhat dry spring.  Some yucca blooming but not a lot.

An aspen sprout emerges from a crack in these north-facing rocks on Cedar Mountain.  You would never expect to find aspen in these parts but there are two small clones that have hung on for thousands of years from when the climate was much cooler and aspen and other high mountain species were abundant.  What is called a 'relict' community.  During the severe drought of 1999 - 2002 I expected we had lost these clones.  Some of the individuals died off but in recent years they have been expanding again.

Living on the edge of things is exciting.  The rim of Grand Canyon is a perfect analogy but anywhere in this striking landscape you can find yourself on the knife's edge of change. Much like the abyss seen at the canyon's edge.  From dry, harsh to reassuring green.   Yucca to aspen.  All adapted to this erratic mix of factors. These plants are tested time and again when we go from 40" of precip a year to 11".  From 20 degrees below zero to 100 above.   It's truly astounding.