I hope you’re getting some time away from your home and out into nature…out into the wild. It sure is easy to social distance when you are out in the desert or mountains, but Ms. Mesquitey and I always carry masks with us, just in case we run into a situation that requires them, like having to stop for gas. Anyway, get out and make some biome memories and we’ll compare notes soon!
I always want to add an extra T when I write Yucca baccata, but no, two Cs and one T is correct. The specific epithet baccata is from Latin and means berry. The 6-8” long fleshy fruit look more like bananas than berries, so the common name banana yucca gets it right. Another common name for this yucca is datil, which comes from the Spanish name for date palm fruit/berries…dates. Pronounce it in Spanish, not like the anglicized pronunciation of the town Datil in New Mexico. Perhaps a more accurate common Spanish name should have been platano, but datil it is!
The photos are mine and taken in the desert near the Winchester Mountains.
White-tailed deer in southwest North America are Odocoileus virginiana couesi or Coues white-tailed deer. The naturalist Elliot Coues is probably rolling in his grave...
Dear KXCI listeners, friends and supporters, you might have noticed that we have re-aired some of our original programming over the last two weeks....
For goodness sake, I forgot to mention the black-tailed jackrabbit’s ears. The large iconic ears are magnificent parabolic reflectors that keep them well informed...
