[ Lost in the Landscape ]

desert plants… in the desert

Let me start with a piece of advice: New hiking boots plus old, thin socks can be a painful combination!

Yesterday I tagged along with a group of hikers that I’d done a trip with a couple years ago. The destination this time was a cluster of four survey benchmarks along the U.S.-Mexican border. One of them appeared on the map as “Bennie.” The others quickly got tagged as “the Jets,” after the old Elton John song.

Some hikers prefer leisurely strolls over flat, carefully maintained paths. This group isn’t made up of any of that variety. At one point on the hike, while we were crossing a broad, flat, sandy valley, one of the core members apologized to me. “Our hikes are are usually a lot more uphill than this.”

That was what I recollected from the last trip I’d taken with the group. But I’m not in the same condition that I was for that earlier hike. Yesterday, thirteen and a half miles of travel—which included climbing up the slick face of a dry waterfall, two stubbed toes and five blisters on my feet—was adventure enough for me!

Here are some of the hikers, including Parasol Patsy, who set a high standard of looking cool and casual in the wilds.

Say “desert” to anyone and they’ll probably think of cactus. This is the California barrel cactus, Ferocactus cylindraceus. It proved to be a common presence all along the trip whenever we climbed above the dry stream beds.

The next image shows the hillside terrain, complete with barrel cactus, cholla cactus (Cylindropuntia sp., in the center, front), and—most dramatic to the left—ocotillo, Fouquieria splendens. Almost anyone who has hiked in these areas knows that a common name for some cholla cactus species is “jumping cholla,” a piece of urban legend deriving from the fact that the plants can break apart into little bits anytime anyone as much as touches the plant. The little barbs hold on to your clothing or your skin and work themselves into your clothes or your skin, taking a piece of the plant with them. It only looks like they jump. (Anyone looking for an idea for a horror movie?)

The ocotillos were leafing out, a sure sign that it’s rained in the area recently. The plants can grow and shed their leaves several times each year in response to rainfall. Some were developing buds at the ends of their stems in preparation for the outrageous flowerings of tubular orange-red blooms that these plants are capable of.

Another sure sign of recent rains was this massive desert lake, in the heart of Davies Valley. Few plants grew in the immediate area, letting you know that these desert plants prefer occasional sprinkles of water rather than wallowing in it.

This being the desert, signs of lack of water were all around…

A trip to this area gives you the feeling that the border between the U.S. and Mexico is a purely arbitrary one. Gosh, there isn’t even a welcome sign or a border fence in these parts. How rude.

These are two views into Mexico from the promontories we climbed on the trip. Occasional pieces of discarded clothing, abandoned empty water bottles and—weirdly—a frying pan let you know that this was an area that was used for border crossings. On this late-December day temperatures reached the mid-sixties, perfect hiking weather. Border crossings done at other times of the year, when the temperatures would be over 110, would prove a lot more dangerous.

Any trip to the border regions isn’t complete without an encounter with the U.S. Border Patrol. This was out first contact, a flyover by an agency helicopter. Later, at the end of the hike, as we were packing up our cars, we were visited by agents in two SUVs. For officers who don’t know what to do with the desert it must be a dusty, tedious job. I like to think that attending to a group of tired hikers was a fun break in their routine.

The visit by the Border Patrol was a fitting end to the trip. This only looked like a trek through unspoiled wilderness. The truth is that this is an area that’s complex with political intrigue and history, and where the tensions of economic survival coincide with issues of basic human endurance and survival.

I try hard to find landscapes that to me feel pure and untouched by the ways of humanity. But a trip like this tells you that such a place doesn’t exist.

December 30 2008 | Categories: landscape • places | Tags: cholla cactus • Cylindropuntia • desert plants • deserts • Ferocactus cylindraceus • Fouquieria splendens • hiking • immigration • native plants • ocotillos • politics • U.S.-Mexico border • water | 4 Comments »

in bloom: this big aloe

Sorry. I don’t know the species, but it’s for sure an aloe, possibly Aloe arborescens. It’s pretty common in Southern California but spectacular nevertheless, especially in bloom:




This is the plant in the front yard. It’s now mounding something like 6 feet tall and maybe 8 wide, and covered with these tall spires of coral-orange-red flowers. You can easily forget that there are other things blooming.




Like other aloes, it originates in Southern Africa, if not South Africa proper. It left a Mediterranean climate similar to California’s, and thrives on the warm, dry summers and cool, moister winters. Some summers it endures more than a month with no supplemental water, and it’d survive just fine if it didn’t get half of how much it gets. But like many things it responds to a little coaxing, and with a little water looks a little less feral.

There’s a definite hierarchy among some ecologically-concerned though a little purist gardeners. Fake English country gardens that in the desert that is California require lots of water and are filled with overfed disposable plants blooming themselves to death are near the dregs of the dregs at the bottom of the list. Drought-tolerant landscaping rises lots higher. And in the highest regard are the drought-tolerant gardens that rely solely on native plants. So this aloe is a middle-of-the-road choice in social consciousness. If it were human it’d probably drive a Subaru and vote for fairly progressive causes, though it might be caught throwing recyclables out with the landfill trash or listening to Howard Stern.

It’s interesting that a plant can have been in cultivation here for a century or more and still be considered an exotic species. Human ancestors that might have brought the plant with them would now be long-gone, though their progeny could be considered native to wherever they were born. Biology, though, has a much longer memory, and with good reason.

Some of these species brought over from other places could take over the biota, just like the human exotics have pretty much displaced the native populations that were here before them. Those of us who aren’t Native Americans are the human kudzus, the human tamarisks, the human tumbleweeds—opportunistic colonizers of a benign new prospect. Some of these other garden plants could well go on to be the scourge of the continent. But in the end the plants and the immigrants all share the basic will to survive—survive first and ask moral questions later if at all.

Fortunately, this aloes seems content in its place as it gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger, shading its competitors and smothering smaller plants around it.

Uh oh.

Sure is pretty though, eh?

January 14 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden • plant profiles • rambles | Tags: aloes • drought-tolerant landscaping • immigration | 1 Comment »