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.
One day several years ago I sat down and wrote this story about growing up in Kentucky. I still sit and hand write my...
I was wondering if I talk about dock (Rumex hymenosepalus) every spring, so I looked though my notes. Well, not every spring, but almost....
The photos are mine of Verbesina encelioides. Although it’s quite pretty, “a common weed of roadsides and waste places.”* *Kearney and Peebles, Arizona Flora
