IN THE DESERT — Anyone who has ever wandered into an Arizona desert has undoubtedly encountered the rather plentiful, but inconspicuous, plant known as the creosote bush. They’re not much to look at — spindly shrubs that stand anywhere from three to six feet tall and measure about two to 10 feet across. The stems carry small resinous leaves and, in the spring, they bear little yellow flowers. But that undistinguished exterior conceals a long-living plant…
Q: Are tumbleweeds a specific plant or is that a generic term for any dead plant that is blown around by the wind?
A: New to these parts, stranger? Actually, so are tumbleweeds, relatively speaking.
Tumbleweeds really are a specific plant, the mature form of the Russian thistle, Salsola iberica.We think of them as being a real symbol of the West: wide-open spaces and the Sons of the Pioneers and all that. The fact of the matter is tumbleweeds are immigrants from the steppes of Asia. I didn’t know that before, even though during my Wonder Bread years I spent many extremely boring hours digging them out of the ancestral estate.
Q: I’d like to plant some mesquite, but I’ve heard they sprout best after passing through the alimentary canal of a bird or a cow or some other animal. Without such an animal, will they still sprout?
A: Did you know they used to use mesquite wood to pave streets in some towns in Texas? That would be something to see.
Yes, it is true that mesquite is dispersed by animals eating the seedpods and depositing the seeds elsewhere. And it is true that such seeds germinate easily because they hit the ground with a big dollop of fertilizer.
However, you do not have to have a cow or a bird or whatever around to grow mesquite.
Q: Why don’t palm trees blow down in strong wind as often as other trees do?
A: I thought this was going to be an easy one, and I was prepared to pad it out with a lot of cheap jokes about my masters.
Instead, it got kind of complicated, so I had to cut out the jokes, which is just as well because I would have had to explain them to my masters anyway.
This is the deal: Palm trees are monocots as opposed to other trees, such as paloverdes or oaks, which are dicots.
Kim Stone, a horticulturist at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum near Superior, went to some pains to explain the differences to me. He is a very patient man.
Q: Why do people paint the trunks of their citrus trees white?
A: HA! At last, a question we actually knew the answer to without having to look it up or ask somebody. It’s to protect them from the sun.
We are soooooo smart.
To celebrate, we asked an actual newcomer in the office if she knew why citrus trunks are painted white, and she said it was to repel insects. These comical newcomers.We were going to laugh at her until we remembered she is much higher up the food chain than us and holds what passes for our career in her elegant and well-manicured hands. So we didn’t laugh.
Just to double-check, and to look busy, we called Ralph Backhaus, a professor of plant biology at Arizona State University.
