My morning ditties are not nearly as amazing as the song of a curved bill thrasher, but they help me begin the day. If I start thinking about the groundwater pumping in the the Sulphur Springs Valley of Cochise County, Arizona, I’ll want to sing dirges, so singing to the flora and fauna around our little homestead is a good thing.
In the foothills and mountains around you and me, white flowering honeysuckle (Lonicera albiflora) can be found from 3,500 ft to 6,000 ft. I find it along streams or very nearby. The plant in our yard, where I sometimes wander by singing, is a large shrub (6’ X 6”), but on occasion in the wild I’ve seen it as a vine and twining up into oaks. Make up your mind Lonicera albiflora!
The photos are mine. The flowers and the fruit are beautiful!
The scientific name of the black swallowtail is Papilio polyxenes. Papilio is from the Latin for butterfly and the specific epithet polyxenes is from...
Our one flowering wildflower on this wonderful day was the very pretty perennial called penny cress or candy tufts. It is the former Thlaspi...
Mala Mujer or Cnidoscolus angustidens is an interesting plant in Euphorbiaceae, the spurge family. It’s found in southeastern Arizona and south into Sonora on...