Plant Story--Three-Leaf Sumac

You walk by without noticing. Its a nondramatic shrub, but very common across the whole western half of the United States link

The USDA calls it skunkbush sumac. Other sources call it three-leaf sumac, skunkbush, lemonberry sumac and in the older literature, squawbush. It is Rhus trilobata in the sumac and poison ivy family, Anacardiaceae.

The name skunkbush comes from the odor of the shrub, which many people find unpleasant and I have never noticed.

Tallgrass Prairie--the Lost Ecosystem

Romance is in the eye of the beholder. Many people find forests romantic. Many fewer love prairies.

So let me talk about tallgrass prairie.

Most people have never seen a tallgrass prairie. Just two hundred years ago, tallgrass prairie extended from the forests of Kentucky and Tennessee to the middle of Nebraska and Kansas, from the Gulf of Mexico to southern Canada.

Plant Confusions--The Three Bergamots

THREE unrelated plants are called bergamot, a pear, an orange and a mint.

wild bergamot

The original plant to have the name bergamot was the bergamot pear, Pyrus communis, (rose family, Rosaceae). (Link scroll down to lemon bergamot pear). Pears came to Europe from Asia before Roman times and were very popular fruits. Many sizes and shapes developed, across the Middle East and in Europe. Bergamot pears were a variety with a very round fruit. The food timeline website (link) suggests the name was from Pergamos, a village in Cyprus, because these bergamot pears
came from the Middle East during the Crusades and were also called Syrian pears. The Oxford English dictionary states the name is from their Italian name bergamotta, from the Turkish

Plant Story--Chokecherries, a Native American Cherry

We call them chokecherries. They are native American shrubs or small trees, in the same genus as cherries and plums, scientifically Prunus virginiana. They grow all across North America except the deep South (USDA map). We could have called them Virginia cherries, a much more dignified name. The name chokecherry name probably comes from the fact that the raw fruits are a shocking experience to your mouth: you pop one in and oh! my! it is sour, puckery, chokingly astringent. Yet chokecherries are edible and were widely used by Native Americans and settlers. Fruit pictures

Common Names--What a Mess!

Saskatoon berries, or you might know them as...

Here are the fruits on my saskatoon--you might know them service berries or June berries. In the East you might call this a shadbush. Robins don't argue over the names, they just gobble the fruits down.

To entertain with the stories I love, I have to identify the plant. That is what names are for--communication. Why is it so difficult to have widely recognized plant names?

Visiting Baja California--Flowers in the Desert

mesquite, probably  Prosopis glandulosa, honey mesquite 

Deserts are stressful places for plants. Water is in short supply and often unpredictable in its arrival. Growing and flowering are difficult, since they require water. Yet plants like the mesquite, above, and the cardón cacti, below, were in flower in the dry Baja California desert in April.

desert scene, Baja California

Deserts plants cope with drought various ways.  Annual plants are opportunists. They spend most of the time as seeds, then grow, flower and go to seed within one to four weeks after a good rain, not to reappear until the next heavy rain. Other plants are perennial, visible members of the community. They have woody stems that increase in size or expand without wood from a big root system. Perennial plants must store water, soaking it up like a sponge when it rains, so that they can consume it slowly during long dry periods. Some perennials flower based on rainfall, but others flower the same time every year, using their stored water.

On the islands of the southern half of the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez), a surprizing number of perennial plants were flowering in mid-April.

Plant Story--Wavy Leaf Thistle, A Pretty Native, Not A Weed

Wavy leaf thistle, Cirsium undulatum, is a native thistle of the plains and the west of North America (sunflower family, Asteraceae). Thistles are a weird group: some are rare and endangered, some are extremely abundant noxious weeds. Wavy leaf isn't currently protected, but it is closer to being rare than noxious.