There is no getting around it, every summer monsoon when the borderlands come to life it is so exciting! Apodanthera undulata, the crazy melon, can be easily seen along the roads and out across the land during this season. The clusters of yellow flowers give it away quickly. Those yellow flowers close up pretty quickly later in the morning. You can see the spent and tired flowers in the photo below. And check out the crazy ribbed fruit with the “disagreeable odor” as noted in Arizona Flora. Hey, it’s melon loco in the Cucurbitaceae! Yay!
The original version of the “El Niño Song” aired on KXCI, Tucson’s Community Radio, November 28th 1997. That version can also be found on...
I originally learned the botanical name of this native plant as Eupatorium greggii, but it is now Conoclinum dissectum. It’s neat that the tribute...
It was Carl Linnaeus, the king of binomial nomenclature, who decided to use the classical Latin name fraxinus as the genus for ash trees....
