Everything Picturesque about the Upland Southwest

Yellow-blossom cholla cactus, dead Gambel oak, one-seed juniper, barbed wire, old sun-baked tires, pile of rusty tin cans. If it can stab you, it will.

And in the air, the overpowering smell of musk mustard, only slightly sweeter than skunk spray. 

Back home, M. was out picking some wild greens to put in our supper. I suggested musk mustard — all the very best foraging blogs recommend it.

"I don't care what the foraging blogs say," she replied. "It makes me nauseous."

So we get lambsquarter instead. 

Musk mustard, Chorispora tenella, a/k/a purple mustard.

What do the foraging blogs say? Things like this:

There are very few greens tasty enough to make an entire salad out of; musk mustard is one of those greens. Lightly dressed with a drizzle of oil & vinegar and a few crumbles of goat cheese…it’s the perfect salad. If you listened to the National Park Service and cattle ranchers, you’d think musk mustard was a noxious weed. And you’d be missing out on an easy-to-identify, plentiful wild edible.

Or  this:

Among the plants I observed and collected on this trip, wild mustards made a strong showing. These are often overlooked or passed over for sexier wild fare, but wild mustards are plentiful and accessible throughout Denver area right now—making them a good choice for a late April, early May foray. 

No quelites wars at our house, though. I picked some prickly lettuce, which is a little bitter on the line of dandelions, but not more than some of the greens sold in stores.

Lambsquarters Is the New Kale

Some tiny lambsquarters seeds and a book that has nothing
about lambsquarters in it.

M. and I ate a lot of lambsquarter (lambsquarters? lamb's-quarter(s)? anyway, Chenopodium album) this summer, as I wrote in early July: "Not-Gardening in a Time of Drought."

They, wild amaranth, and our nettle patch provided most of our early-summer greens — on their own, mixed into pasta, or baked with cheese in Greek pie (spanakopita).

We did not know how trendy we are! Lambsquarters was (were?) recently featured in a Los Angeles Times lifestyle blog: " Lambsquarters: Weed harvested as wild food."

Volunteer lambsquarters.

Mia Wasilevich, a wild foods chef, and her partner, Pascal Baudar, lead classes in foraging in the environs of L.A. When they have collected a wild harvest, Wasilevich transforms the weed into something more civilized -- pesto or spring rolls with a brilliant green dollop of lambsquarters glistening under the rice paper.

“It’s a wild food and I prefer to cook it down, even for a short time,” she says. “I do a pureed green velvet soup with it that’s lovely. It can go in any number of sauces. I just did a lambsquarters benedict, like a florentine, with quails eggs. It makes a beautiful sauce.”

I guess that makes M. a "wild foods chef" too, since she is also adept with mushrooms.

But there is more. Ethnobotanists are pursuing lambsquarter(s) as well.

"It's a bit like Jurassic Park," I told a greenhouse visitor while I tucked another inflorescence into a glassine paper bag. "People ate this like quinoa almost 4000 years ago. The variety grown here vanished hundreds of years ago, but with a bit of work we can bring it back". . . .

In the past, lambsquarters may have been prepared and eaten the same ways as quinoa and huauzontle. The archaeological data are clear that lambsquarters was an important crop in prehistoric eastern North America, but many details about the extinct crop are hard to pin down. Where did it come from? How was it grown? How was it eaten? What is known comes from seed cashes and storage pits where seeds passed the centuries until archaeologists uncovered them.

And from the sadly defunct Colorado foraging blog Wild Food Girl, recipe for "Lambs' Quarters Pesto with Sunflower Seeds."

More:

This is a weed of garden beds and landscaping. Like a dedicated pup, it follows us humans around, much as we have sought it out. In The Forager’s Harvest (2006), Sam Thayer explains that the goosefoot C. berlandieri has been used by native people here for thousands of years, prior to contact with European settlers, who brought their own strain of edible Chenopodium to North American soils, whether or not intentionally. There is archaeological evidence for Chenopodium seeds in North America dating back thousands of years, he explains, citing Smith (1992). “Depending on classification, these seeds may or may not represent C. album; but some of them certainly represent plants that would commonly be called “lamb’s quarters,” he writes.

In past years, we have always counted in the lambsquarters coming up on its own in various spots. Unlike the guy in LA, we don't have to keep them a secret — they are right next to the house.

What we have done this year is gather some seeds, just to make sure that they keep coming up. Who knows, maybe we will devote some garden space to lambsquarter(s) — our own little Neolithic Revolution. You can be a foodie and eat like the Old Ones at the same time!

Not-Gardening in a Time of Drought

Lamb's quarter, self-seeded in a big tub.

It rained three nights ago, boosting our total for the past four weeks to a magnificent 0.2 inches, or about 5 mm. Coming after a dry spring, it's serious drought time.

The creek had already gone dry, although the sandy bottom was moist. Since our well is in the creek aquifer—somewhere—the state of the creek is always a concern.

Some areas upstream got more rain than here, and a trickle of flowing water has returned, muddy water that must be coming off an upstream burn scar.

Knowing these conditions were coming, thanks to the shamanic prophecies of the National Weather Service, we did not even try to garden like normal. Almost everything we planted is in containers—some tomatoes, some herbs.

And there there is the Zen of not-gardening.  Instead, we took what showed up on its own.

One is lamb's quarter a/k/a goosefoot, a Chenopodium, which means "goose foot" in Latin. How lambs get into the story, I do not know. I assume that sheep would eat it. When it's too dry even for Swiss chard, these are our greens.

Another edible volunteer is wild amaranth, when it's young. Call them both quelites, if you prefer.

A third is nettles, which M. planted several years ago and which have firmly established themselves, putting them in the class of feral greens. Lots of hippie/Greek nettle pie is eaten in this house, "hippie" because she insists on making a whole-wheat sort of-phyllo dough.

We were going to try growing a similar plant to lamb's quarter, "Good King Henry," Blitum bonus-henricus, this year, but put it off. (In case you were wondering, it was apparently named after Henri IV of France, which just goes to show that you can preside over decades of religious wars and still have a tasty pot herb named for you. He did apparently encourage tree-planting.)

In the woods, brush, and pastures, not much is happening. A few tiny acorns. A scant handful of wildflowers—and what does bloom seems to come early and is stunted, as though the plants are trying to get through an abbreviated life cycle. Even my bomb-proof penstemon is just hanging on, barely existing.

A couple of days ago I thought I saw some Liatris about to bloom, which rocked me back, because its normally a flower that marks the end of summer. I need to go back and double-check. Maybe the plants just want this summer to be over.

Water Hemlock Can Kill a Dog

Last summer a border collie chewed on some water hemlock near Fort Collins and died on its way to the Colorado State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital.

As every plant guide will tell you, water hemlock in bloom looks a lot like Queen Anne's lace, which is completely harmless — its roots are edible. So you can have a fruitful wildcrafting experience, or you can die twitching and drooling.

How do you tell the difference? I was taught the purple blotches, but there are other distinctions as well, which this well-illustrated web page explains.

You might not think of water hemlock as attractive to dogs, but some will chew on plants randomly. (I'm looking at you, Fisher.)

Blog Stew Stored Underground

• Mysterious Kansas: Who built the stone caves and why? "Parish was wowed by the workmanship and created a panoramic image of it. Then he began to wonder: How many more of these are out there?"

New Mexico rock art panel (Western Digs).

• Datura — still legal in New Mexico (and everywhere else). Maybe there is a connection with ancient rock art: "Hallucinogenic plants were found growing beneath the triangle designs, including a particularly potent species of wild tobacco and the potentially deadly psychedelic known as datura."

• Maybe you have read that forest fires are bigger and hotter than in the past. Not if you take the long view, says a University of Colorado study.  "Wildfires along Colorado's Front Range, long assumed to be intensifying, may not be when understood in historical context before 20th-century firefighting, a new study finds."

You Can't Burn 'Em, You Can't Plow 'Em: SE Colorado's Tumbleweed Blizzard

Southeast Colorado county officials try to deal with the combination of blustery spring winds and last summer's bumper crop of tumbleweeds (Russian thistle).

Burning kills the seeds, but you cannot burn them when it is windy. And the various mulching solutions just scatter the seeds.

The Tumbleweed Menace

Colorado Springs Gazette columnist Bill Radford notices the tumbleweed hordes of 2013. 

Oh yeah. I am not one of those people who goes around mowing everything mowable — that is so Midwestern— but this year I mowed one little meadow that I had not touched in twenty years, because it was sprouting kochia and Russian thistle, the baddies:

In El Paso County, the two chief culprits are Russian thistle and kochia, [rancher Sharon] Pattee says. The Colorado State University Extension labels them both as "troublesome annual weeds of rangeland, pastures, fields, disturbed areas, gardens, roadsides, ditch banks and small acreages."

Both are non-native species. Russian thistle originated in, yep, Russia, and is believed to have come to the United States in the late 1800s through contaminated flax seed. Kochia is from Asia.

Tumbleweed Christmas trees? Been there, done that. One year when I was little, I was sick in bed during Christmas, so my older sisters decorated a big globe tumbleweed with glass ornaments and put it by my bed.

This was when we lived in Rapid City, S.D., where they were easy to come by.  This year in southern Colorado, every barbed wire fence looks like a fuzzy brown wall. Yeech.

How dry has it been? Tumbleweed Dry

I mowed the lawn at the guest cabin today — such is the payoff after having more than four inches of rain this month.

But it has been dry. How dry has it been? It has been so dry that the usual invasive weeds such as bindweed are gone, except around the flower bed where they can steal some water.

Instead, the area where all the grass died (previous owner planted bluegrass, which survived the late 1990s but not the 2000s) has been colonized by kochia and Russian thistle (tumblin' tumbleweed).

I have never seen tumbleweed growing around here before. I mowed every bit of it that I could find, hoping to stop it from flowering — the tumbling spreads its gazillions of seeds.

Bark Beetles Eavesdropping on Drought-Stressed Pine Trees

An article on how sound plays a part in plant-plant communication and plant-insect communication, not always beneficially from the plant's point of view.

And there is evidence that insects and plants "hear" each other's sounds. Bees buzz at just the right frequency to release pollen from tomatoes and other flowering plants. And bark beetles may pick up the air bubble pops inside a plant, a hint that trees are experiencing drought stress.

Implications for drought:

In the arid Southwest, [Duke University botantist Dan] Johnson was surprised to find that the plants considered the most drought-tolerant, such as junipers, did worst at repairing embolisms. Broad-leaf plants, including rhododendrons and beaked hazels, were better at fixing the damage caused by dry pipes.

Colorado Interactive Plant, Drought, Maps

A website of interactive maps about growing zones, native plant distribution, frosts, drought, and more. Put in your ZIP code and get all kinds of info! Hello from zone 5b.

Mad Winter Tumbleweed Sex

A 2006 tumbleweed storm in Pueblo West, Colorado.

Brought from Russia in the 1870s by the Volga Germans or someone, bless their little hearts.

Q. What caliber for tumbleweeds?

A. Doesn't matter. When they die, they just spread their seeds.

CPW Stores Native Seeds for Revegetation

A short article with a brief video about Colorado Parks and Wildlife's new native-seeds warehouse in Delta, from a Grand Junction television station.

About 140,000 pounds of seed are currently stored in the warehouse before being dispersed to help re-vegetate soil for animals and damaged by wildfires.

There's over 30 native seeds in the Delta warehouse which officials say will only be distributed along the Western Slope.

"They're stored in climate-control conditions, and they can last for years here. When we have a fire or a big project, the seed is going to be available," said Joe Lewandowski, spokesperson for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

Read the news release, which came out last month.

On the Road: The Kudzu of the Coast

Of the invasive plants in my country, I think that tamarisk and cheatgrass are the worst.

On the recent train trip to California, I saw stands of tamarisk that looked mostly defoliated along the Colorado River downstream from Dotsero. Maybe the beetles are starting to have an effect.

California has its own problems with invasive species — Scotch broom was one that I knew about.

The Monterey Peninsula, where M. and I were staying, offers every kind of succulent from everywhere (particularly southern Africa). It reminded me of places that I have visited in southern England, where the horticultural spoils of empire adorn thousands of suburban gardens.

Ice plant on coastal dune, Pacific Grove, California

There ice plant is the villain. Like kudzu in the South, it was introduced partly for erosion control on highway cut banks and such — and it controlled and controlled until it had driven everything else away and formed big solid monocultural mats.

Death to ice plant!

At least it comes up easier than kudzu.

On The Road: M's New Villa

M. has a new dream house.

We walked by this house a number of times in the past few days. It's a little bit Tuscan villa, a little bit Arts & Crafts.  Some touches, such as the rounded ends of exposed beams, have a Green & Green vibe. M. was ready to pick it up and bring it home.

 

Obviously the residents are tired of architecture fans.

But another big draw for me was this huge Brugmansia, also known as "tree Datura," thriving in that mild climate.

The house is on Lighthouse Avenue in Pacific Grove, California, uphill from the downtown business district, should you happen to be in the neighborhood.

A Blog for Colorado Gardeners

Perennial Favorites is a small nursery in Colorado City, south of Pueblo, so obscure that you only learn of its existence when a friend tells you about it.

The nursery specializes in plants adapted for our altitude, low humidity (the relative humidity was only 2 percent in Pueblo today), and sudden shifts from cold to hot.

Everything comes with expert advice and occasionally contact information for even more obscure growers, scribbled on a scrap of paper.

They do most of their business in May, opening fewer and fewer days as the summer progresses.

M. and I went by today and dropped about $150 on bedding plants—we will rebuild some perennial beds hit hard by this cold, dry winter, and try some new experiments as well.

This year they started a blog, which I will add to my blog roll under Southwesterners, hoping to learn more about growing plants  "particularly suited to Colorado's challenging conditions."

Invasive Phragmites in Fountain Creek

If it isn't one thing, it's another. While the War on Tamarisk proceeds, an invasive variety of phragmites (a type of reed, say it in three syllables) is now potentially a problem in the Fountain Creek  drainage  around Pueblo.

(Photo by Chris McLean, Pueblo Chieftain)

Blog Stew with Jimsonweed

• English gardeners alarmed by Datura—arrived in transatlantic bird droppings? (Yeah, sure.)

• It's getting harder to discuss environmental issues as government sources lose credibility.

• The price of asphalt has some states returning secondary roads to gravel, reports the Wall Street Journal. That happened on one road near my house ten years ago, not to mention the reduced snow-plowing.

Maximilian's Sunflowers

When the first tinge of orange appears on the scrub oaks, the Mexican sunflowers (a/k/a Maximilian['s] sunflower—Helianthus maximiliani) are blooming. They are a New World plant, although not native this far north, where they need extra water, especially in early summer.

In moister climates they can be invasive—not a problem here.

Other than that, and an occasional infestation of stink bugs, they are a bulletproof perennial, which is what I like. At our house they start blooming about the second week of September, just when everything else has pretty much finished, even the wild Liatrus.

Dangerous Plants

From Popular Mechanics, one version of a "10 Most Dangerous Plants" list. I am not surprised that one of the Daturas made the list. I think the New World wins, overall.

How Cacti Live on Rocks

Last June I published two cactus pictures, including one of little prickly pears living on a rock.

Apparently, bacteria are the secret to their success.

"When a seed falls in bats and bird droppings onto barren rock, it contains all the bacteria it needs to pioneer colonisation of that rock," says Dr [Yoav] Bashan [of the Northwestern Center for Biological Research in La Paz, Mexico].