Things I Learned Yesterday
Faywood Hot Springs, Faywood, NM
What I learned yesterday:
What a cactus wren looks like.
I saw a bird with a curved beak perched on the wire near the chicken coop today during my morning walk and I thought, hmm, is that what a cactus wren looks like? I looked it up when I got home and sure enough, it was. In addition to the curved beak, they have a distinctive white stripe above their eyes and a white belly with brown spots. They are the largest of the wrens at about eight inches in length. I also learned recently that birds can have more than one brood per season. The cactus wren can have up to three. You can learn more about this bird at DesertUSA.
What mesquite looks like and what it can be used for.
I've heard of mesquite, of course, and knew that the wood could be burned and its smoke used to flavor meat. I never knew what the plant looked like, though. Recently, one of my fellow campers here at Faywood mentioned that there was mesquite growing all around here. I looked up mesquite online and realized that it's the thorny bush/tree whose identity I've been wondering about during our walks.
Beyond its thorny branches it's not very distinctive at this time of the year, since it sheds its leaves in the winter. In the spring, though, it produces catkins and then later long green pods. I learned that the pods are edible, are an excellent source of protein, and can be ground into flour.
What the sotol plant is and how it can be used.
There's another plant I've been trying to identify and I thought it might be the sotol plant. This plant has long thin spiky leaves and I've been worried that the dog would poke himself in the eye on them, since there are many of them growing eye-height along the edge of the dirt road around the hot springs compound where we're camped. Turns out that the plant I've been seeing is not sotol, it's plain old yucca, I just didn't recognize it because it's a different kind of yucca, one that I've seen before.
The sotol's long leaves have jagged edges; the edges of the leaves on the plant I've been seeing here are, on the contrary, smooth.
Here's sotol:
Here's a closeup of sotol leaves, note the spines on the edges:
Here's a yucca, note how similar it is to the sotol bush:
What saltbrush looks like and its dangers to grazing animals.
Also growing everywhere around the camp is fourwing saltbrush. I was already able to identify it since I'd seen it growing all around our house when we lived in New Mexico a few years ago and during other desert trips. I looked it up just to be sure my identification was correct. It was. It looks similar to sagebrush, except for the shape of its flowers. You can learn more about saltbrush here, from the Forest Service. There are a few interesting things about the plant: its sexual identity is not fixed genetically once-and-for-all, rather, it can switch in response to environmental cues. According to the Forest Service site, one study found that over a period of seven years, within one population of saltbrush, 40% changed sex once and 20% changed sex annually.
I also learned that the seeds and leaves of the bush are edible and some Native Americans in this area used to grind the seeds to make flour or just cook them as-is to make something similar to oatmeal. Leaves were eaten raw or cooked.
And though many native animals eat the various parts of the plant and it's an important source of food for them, animals who eat the plant that are not adapted to this environment can experience selenium poisoning if they eat too much of it, as the plant takes up the mineral selenium from the soil. I've noticed that the cattle that roam around the outside of the hot springs fence do graze on the bush--however, they're also fed hay and saltbrush makes up only a part of their diet. You can read more about saltbrush here (Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center) and here (USDA Forest Service).
What I learned yesterday:
What a cactus wren looks like.
I saw a bird with a curved beak perched on the wire near the chicken coop today during my morning walk and I thought, hmm, is that what a cactus wren looks like? I looked it up when I got home and sure enough, it was. In addition to the curved beak, they have a distinctive white stripe above their eyes and a white belly with brown spots. They are the largest of the wrens at about eight inches in length. I also learned recently that birds can have more than one brood per season. The cactus wren can have up to three. You can learn more about this bird at DesertUSA.
I've heard of mesquite, of course, and knew that the wood could be burned and its smoke used to flavor meat. I never knew what the plant looked like, though. Recently, one of my fellow campers here at Faywood mentioned that there was mesquite growing all around here. I looked up mesquite online and realized that it's the thorny bush/tree whose identity I've been wondering about during our walks.
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| Image from Desert USA |
What the sotol plant is and how it can be used.
There's another plant I've been trying to identify and I thought it might be the sotol plant. This plant has long thin spiky leaves and I've been worried that the dog would poke himself in the eye on them, since there are many of them growing eye-height along the edge of the dirt road around the hot springs compound where we're camped. Turns out that the plant I've been seeing is not sotol, it's plain old yucca, I just didn't recognize it because it's a different kind of yucca, one that I've seen before.
The sotol's long leaves have jagged edges; the edges of the leaves on the plant I've been seeing here are, on the contrary, smooth.
Here's sotol:
Here's a yucca, note how similar it is to the sotol bush:
But when you look closely, you see that the leaves on the yuccas aren't spiny like those of the sotol, they're smooth.
Even though I mis-identified the plant I'd been seeing, I learned something interesting, apart from the difference between the sotol and the yucca. The base of the leaves of the sotol plant can be eaten, similar to how the leaves of an artichoke are. The juice from the stem of the plant can be fermented to make a beer-like drink or distilled to make a kind of liquor called sotol. Sotol is the state liquor of three Mexican states and is regarded by many as a northern relative of tequila and mezcal. Here's an article about the growing popularity of sotol from The New York Times.
Also growing everywhere around the camp is fourwing saltbrush. I was already able to identify it since I'd seen it growing all around our house when we lived in New Mexico a few years ago and during other desert trips. I looked it up just to be sure my identification was correct. It was. It looks similar to sagebrush, except for the shape of its flowers. You can learn more about saltbrush here, from the Forest Service. There are a few interesting things about the plant: its sexual identity is not fixed genetically once-and-for-all, rather, it can switch in response to environmental cues. According to the Forest Service site, one study found that over a period of seven years, within one population of saltbrush, 40% changed sex once and 20% changed sex annually.
 |
| Fourwing saltbrush flowers |
And though many native animals eat the various parts of the plant and it's an important source of food for them, animals who eat the plant that are not adapted to this environment can experience selenium poisoning if they eat too much of it, as the plant takes up the mineral selenium from the soil. I've noticed that the cattle that roam around the outside of the hot springs fence do graze on the bush--however, they're also fed hay and saltbrush makes up only a part of their diet. You can read more about saltbrush here (Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center) and here (USDA Forest Service).
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