Monthly Archives: November 2012

Have A Great Weekend

The last moonflower of the season

Ipomoea alba

The biggest problem with getting vining moonflowers (Ipomoea alba) established isn’t getting the seeds to germinate. It’s getting the first year’s plants through that first year. I don’t know for sure if moonflowers require symbiotic fungi for growth, but the first year attempting to get a decent moonflower vine going has been a nightmare, ever since the first time I tried it nearly fifteen years ago. The year after, though, the problem is keeping them under control. This autumn was especially rough on the small enclave I planted along the garage fence, but finally one bloomed. One single bloom, and sufficiently shaded during the day that it didn’t fade the way they normally do.

Ipomoea alba

With luck, this flower gets some attention from the local bees and wasps, and produces seed before the first big freezes come in. If that happens, then expect to see them again next year and every year where they’re able to go to seed. As compared to the completely unrelated but superficially similar blooms from angel trumpets (Datura stramonium), these are nontoxic, they’re generally noninvasive in North Texas, they produce quite a bit of habitat for local lizards, praying mantids, and assassin bugs, and they offer food for both night-dwelling hawkmoths and the occasional very early hummingbird. Combine that with their generally low-maintenance habits, and they’re perfect vining flowers for that bluecollar goth of your acquaintance.

Tales From The Ranch: more Opuntia tales

Opuntia with fruit

Most people visiting the deserts of the American Southwest are slightly surprised whenever they see any of the Opuntia cacti commonly called “prickly pear”. “Where’s the pear?”, they ask, especially if they visit in the winter or spring. Well, that’s because the fruit hasn’t developed yet. Like most fruits, they let you and everything else know that they’re ripe and ready, and the season for prickly pear fruit generally runs between the beginning of October to the end of the year. The season generally isn’t determined by whether the fruit goes bad, but whether or not it’s still on the plant, because it’s quite popular.

Opuntia fruit

Among other folks, prickly pear fruit is very popular among humans, and has been a staple in this area pretty much since humans first arrived in the Americas. Most popular guidebooks on cactus make a big deal about how the fruit is used for candy, jams, jellies, and the like, so a lot of tourists and new residents risk getting poked by spines and snagged by insect pests to grab a fruit or two. Without fail, they’re disappointed at the very subtle and mild taste, compared to what the brilliant purple coloration promises. They’re also disappointed by the number and consistency of the seeds, which have all of the thrill of sucking on aquarium gravel. (Do NOT ask me know I know this, because you won’t like the answer.) Even so, once you get used to the taste, you can understand why this is one of the two main commercially raised cactus fruits, with the other being dragonfruit cactus.

(The trick to eating prickly pear, by the way, is to slice them in halves or quarters and toast the cut surfaces slightly, because it carmelizes the sugars in the juice and really brings out the flavor. Prickly pear may never replace pomegranates, but they have their charms. As for the jams and jellies, just be prepared to boil it down a lot to concentrate those sugars. I’ve found that dropping the whole fruit, by the kilo, into a smoothie machine and draining off the juice is the fastest and most practical way to get enough juice to be worth your time.)

Opuntia fruit leftovers

Well, the seeds are as voluminous and as tough as they appear, but they have to be. In the wild, they’re a major autumn food source for a lot of local animals, including coyotes, foxes (red and grey), raccoons, opossums, peccaries, feral pigs, skunks, the occasional mockingbird wanting a taste treat, and cattle. The only thing more common this time of the year than prickly pear skins along clumps of Opuntia are the seed-filled scat of some critter that had a hearty meal a few days before. Since the seed coatings are as tough as they are, that predigestion seems to encourage their germination in spring, which is one of the reasons why prickly pear takes over most cattle land in West Texas. The other reason is that the rest of the plant is so unappetizing, both in flavor and in general inedibility (both from spines and toughness), that even goats won’t eat the cactus unless faced with starvation. The stories about ranchers burning the spines of prickly pear to feed cattle during drought? They’re true, but at that point, the cattle would eat plastic garbage bags first if given a choice. (Again, do NOT ask me how I know this.)

Cocineal bugs on Opuntia

This time of the year is also a great opportunity to see another bit of Opuntia natural history, tied to human history. In the autumn, many Opuntia pads have big clusters of white fluff on them, and many just assume that this is some odd mold. The more adventurous will scrape away the “mold” and find a small insect inside. Squish the bug, and it lets loose a disturbing amount of bright red juice, and every clump of “mold” has at least one bug underneath it.

Cocineal bugs on Opuntia

The bug in question is Dactylopius coccinus, and that red juice is commonly known as carmine or cochineal. Today, these scale insects are gathered, dried and processed as food colorings, among other things, but their value as an intense dye stretches back centuries.

And now a quick digression into a discussion on exotic invasives, and why Australia used to be rotten with prickly pear. When the Spanish conquered most of the Americas, they rapidly discovered the value of cochineal dye, and before long, it was as valuable an export to Europe as chocolate or vanilla. It was added to fat to make carmine, sure, but its real value was as a stable and intense cloth dye, and the famed red coats of the British Army used cochineal dye to give that eye-popping color.

Anyone looking on the Spanish occupation of the Americas notes that the Spanish weren’t just good at recognizing markets for American products, but at keeping a tight grip on intellectual property. While Spanish traders had no problems selling chocolate throughout Europe, for instance, in no way were they willing to give out any secrets about the trees that grew xocolatl or their care. (To give an example, while Spanish explorers and administrators had extensive experience with the common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus, throughout Central and South America, they managed to keep that knowledge under control for over 300 years, and stories of bats that drank blood only started seeping into Europe about the time Bram Stoker was writing Dracula.) So long as the Spanish were a major force in the Americas, only they and their allies were allowed access to the scientific wealth of the new territories, and English, Dutch, or French explorers were driven off with extreme prejudice.

Well, that would have worked if Mexico, the center of cochineal production through the Eighteenth Century, hadn’t fought and won its war of independence, because that gave plenty of opportunities for explorers to learn secrets previously open only to the Spanish. (And when I say “Mexico”, remember that a big stretch of what is now United States territory, particularly a place you’ve never heard of called “Texas”, was Mexican territory at the time.) The secret of cochineal production got out, and now all anyone needed to do was establish a population of cochineal bugs and their necessary food.

Hence, while prickly pear was introduced with poor success to many areas, the botanist Sir Joseph Banks put bugs in ears (pun intended) about establishing a cochineal industry in Australia. It would have worked, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling chemists developing artificial dyes through the Nineteenth Century, and the market for cochineal collapsed almost literally overnight. The cactus survived, though, and rapidly took over the continent. Now under relative control, various Opuntia species still thrive in Australia, for the same reasons they do so incredibly well in the Americas. Namely, the individual pads sprout into new plants if given half a chance, and the seeds are spread by wildlife glad for the fruit bounty.

In this case, I don’t think the ranch is going to become a hub for cochineal production, no matter its value as a food and cosmetics colorant. Instead, I’m looking forward to pointing it out to my nieces and relate “Hey, if you want, I can make you your own lipstick while you wait. Let me get some beef tallow and a few bugs.” At that point, the responsibility of smacking me in the head while yelling “What the hell is WRONG with you?” will move to a new generation.

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Tales From The Ranch: Intermission 3

East Quarry

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Tales From The Ranch: Intermission 2

East Quarry

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Tales From The Ranch: Intermission

Ranch strata

Tales From The Ranch: Mystery Cactus

Bunch cactus

Yes, it’s time to go back to school. I can’t identify this bunching cactus without proper references, and I don’t know enough about cactus to know for sure. All I can say is that it’s rather common at the ranch, especially in fields covered with limestone slabs, and it’s exceedingly attractive both in and out of flower. Other than that, it’s time to study.

Bunch cactus

Bunch cactus

Bunch cactus

Bunch cactus

Tales From The Ranch: Surprise at Night

Cocoon in Opuntia leptocaulis

I generally don’t recommend driving around the in-laws’ ranch at night, particularly in an open-top vehicle. It’s not out of any worry about the local wildlife, although I’m pretty sure that any local mountain lion hungry enough would pluck me out of an ATV if I weren’t paying attention. The real danger comes from overhanging branches (mesquite trees have nasty thorns that will take chunks of meat if you hit them at sufficient speed) and cactus clumps, as well as the occasional steer or deer that won’t move out of the way. The occasional trip at dusk, though, reveals treasure.

Cocoon in Opuntia leptocaulis

Stopping at one particular point, the last of the sun’s rays were just enough to highlight a strange white blotch in a clump of Opuntia leptocaulis cactus. A closer look, and I found two silken lumps among the cactus arms, which I first took to be spider egg cases. A quick check, though showed them to be moth cocoons. What kind, though, I have no idea. Whatever they were, the caterpillars were rather large, about the size of my thumb joint, and the moths may be comparable. Either way, it may be worth a trip back to the ranch in early spring to see what emerged.

Tales From The Ranch: The Lepidodendron Layer

Fat Vulture Gulch

Out at the in-laws’ ranch, most of the available strata is former ocean bed. As such, it’s rotten with fossils, usually of crinoids, sea urchins, and other well-armored fauna. In a few very lucky areas, these have opal cores, sadly not of gemstone quality but fascinating nonetheless. The vast majority of the local rocks are very soft shale (including the now-famous Barnett Shale, which stretches all the way east to Dallas) or harder limestone, and that limestone was mined extensively as building stone since the Great Depression. However, right along the Brazos River is another formation, and it’s only accessible in one place on the ranch. That road is jokingly named “Fat Vulture Gulch,” because the combination of steepness and loose rubble promises that anybody attempting to drive it recklessly is going to become vulture food. As it is, the only way to get down it with motorized transport involves 4-wheel drive, and even then it’s a serious white-knuckle drive up or down.

Lepidodendron Layer strata

As mentioned before, most of the rocks on the ranch are oceanic in origin, but the strata that makes up Lookout Point is a bit different. This rather thick layer is otherwise only accessible from Fat Vulture Gulch, and it’s extremely different from the others above and below. Besides being much harder and more erosion-resistant than the limestone mud below it, it’s a relatively coarse conglomerate of sandstone and smooth pebbles. As the mud below it weathers away, it comes free in large slabs, most of which worked their way free before the road went in. Best of all, I gave it the informal designation “the Lepidodendron Layer”, because it’s rich with fossils of tree branches, roots, and sometimes leaves, very likely from the Carboniferous Period lycopod plant Lepidodendron.

Lepidodendron Layer - bent strata

Absolute confirmation of this formation’s origin either lie underneath the bulk of the ranch or were eroded away as the Brazos River worked its way across the desert, but those rounded pebbles give a hint as to where those Lepidodendron parts came from. At one point, while the main ranch strata is marine, a river emptied into the sea near this point, and both regular flow and the occasional flood dumped huge amounts of sand and stone over the local muds. Some of those floods transported wood from the forests along the river, and as that sunk, later floods buried it further. That river may have lasted a few hundred years, or a few thousand, but ultimately it was itself choked by rising ocean levels, and all that was left was the detritus caught in this sandstone layer.

Lepidodendron Layer - bent strata

Of particular note are some of the oddly bent slabs in the area. Since this area isn’t exactly known for its geologic uplifts, and since the material inside isn’t severely distorted by heat and pressure, the suggestion is that these slabs were deformed while they were still heavily compressed mud. Only a few show this distortion, so are we looking at alluvial deposits following an ocean slump, or did earthquakes cause a slump in the muds beneath them after they were already buried? It’s time to go back to school and find out, I think.

Lepidodendron Layer - individual slab

This slab may not have any especial scientific value, but its personal value is immeasurable. The Czarina and I spent our honeymoon on the ranch, and my first visit to Fat Vulture Gulch was during a particularly overcast and drizzly day in January. Because of the rain, a piece of turquoise showed itself atop this slab, and a couple of deft taps with a rock hammer freed it for the first time in a third of a billion years. The Czarina still has this chunk after all of this time, and one of these days, she’s going to mount it in a piece of her own jewelry. That turquoise has no real value, either, but that’s not why we still hang onto it.

Lepidodendron Layer - cliff

While it will probably outlast me, my relations, and anybody who might come across my name, the Lepidodendron Layer is doomed. As mentioned, the limestone mud below it is extremely soft, and it rapidly weathers away in every rain. West Texas doesn’t get much rain, but when it does, it comes in huge gullywasher storms, and without adequate ground cover, those gullies wash clean. Ultimately, all of the Lepidodendron Layer will end up in the Brazos, following the mud into the abyss, and those slabs will be torn apart by river, rain, freezes, and the occasional rockhound.

Fat Vulture Gulch - limestone overview

Before that happens, though, the mud needs to wash away, and Fat Vulture Gulch has a lot of it. The erosion in recent times is obvious, judging by the occasional lost tree still attempting to hang on as the mud disappears, but this is still a layer that’s at least 100 feet (30.48 meters) deep. We may be waiting for a while.

Fat Vulture Gulch - lone tree

Fat Vulture Gulch - lone tree nebari

In bonsai terminology, surface root arrangements are called nebari. This tree won’t have much but nebari before too long.

Tales From The Ranch: Brazos overview

Lookout Point over the Brazos River

One of the essential activities on visiting the ranch, summer or winter, involves standing on the overhang called Lookout Point and viewing the Brazos River. Many of the Czarina’s family race on ATVs down the ranch roads to Lookout Point, take a quick photo from the point, and rush back to beat the record time. Me, I could stand to be out here for hours, because this spot is one of the few spots in the area where you can really appreciate how big Texas can be. You can’t see Fort Worth from here, but you can come awfully close.

Brazos River at low point

As mentioned previously, the drought of 2011 wasn’t necessarily repeated in 2012, but this autumn is unnaturally dry compared to previous years. Usually, by Thanksgiving weekend, we’ve had at least two hard, thorough gullywasher storms within the previous week to bring up water levels through the area. This year, though, we haven’t had any appreciable precipitation since the middle of October. What sprinklings we’ve seen have evaporated away, and the south winds dry out ground and skin even faster. The Brazos River generally doesn’t go dry, but most of the smaller bodies of water in the area are threatening to do so.

Bend in the Brazos River

By way of example, this bend shows both the scars of the great floods of 1990, where all of that sandy area was under about three meters of water or more, and the current deficit. By now, that little promontory should be an island, even if the water surrounding it is ankle-high. Right now, the river is so low that you don’t need a boat to cross. In spots, you could use a ladder.

Pillar at Lookout Point

Right now may be dry, but the occasional violent storms that pass through the area leave their mark. 350 million years ago, this pillar of limestone mud was the bottom of a shallow sea, full of crinoids and other ocean life. Last summer, it had had a capstone of the same formation that makes up Lookout Point atop it, protecting the mud from rainfall. Sometime in the last few months, that capstone slid off in a storm, and the rest of the pillar will fall over the next year or so. As the seasons progress, the mud underneath Lookout Point weathers away as well, and it will ultimately collapse and fall into the river valley. It could happen tomorrow and it could happen in a thousand years, but the fractures on the Point show that it’s going to happen, sooner or later. I may enjoy loitering around the Point, but I’m not planning to sit there that long.

Tales From The Ranch: The Fall Visit

Moon over Opuntia

The heat broke back in October, so the Czarina and I did for Thanksgiving weekend what most people do: we spent it with family. The difference is that we spent it with her family out at their ranch in West Texas. She got her fill of wide open vistas, and I had the chance to explore natural history at a time when most of the local flora was out of the way. Not all of it, of course: the resident agaves, cactus, salt cedar, and mesquite were just as common as usual, but the various grasses and small herbs were either dead or gone, giving clarity to previously overgrown areas. Combine that with a nearly full moon rising just before dark and both Jupiter and Aldebaran rising in the evening, and this was a perfect time to come out for a visit.

Nearly full moon

And a moment of transitory beauty

Autumn color in North Texas

Admittedly, it’s due to both that sudden freeze we had two weeks ago and our current unnaturally dry autumn, but anyone want to tell me again about how North Texas doesn’t get fall color? (As noted before, this is definitely due to our current lack of precipitation, because I’ve passed these trees for years on my way to the Day Job, and never once seen a smidgen of color from them before. I’m glad for the moment of beauty, but I’ll also be very, VERY glad when we start getting rain again. It’s getting to be a bit too much like 1952, meteorologically speaking, to suit me.)

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Cat Monday

Cadigan

Have a Great Weekend

The Czarina is a tremendous Rik Mayall fan, and she seems to think that I look like Mayall. If this video doesn’t fix that, I don’t know what will.

Black Friday

On behalf of everyone having to work behind a counter today, here’s a clip from the best documentary about Dallas ever made. Nine years ago, I was facing this scene at the Dallas Galleria, and just about anybody who has ever worked retail, specifically at a shopping mall, has anecdotes about this not being fiction.

It’s all about the season

On behalf of the Texas Triffid Ranch and everyone here, I hope everyone in the States has a great Thanksgiving weekend. For everyone, here’s one of the only holiday specials you’ll see me endorsing, courtesy of my people’s answer to Doctor Who.

(Well, that’s not really true. The Star Wars Holiday Special takes a lot of justified grief, but the basic concept is sound. This is why I’m waiting for the premiere of The Walking Dead Christmas Special, complete with musical numbers by Bea Arthur and Paul Lynde.)

Lullaby and good night, close your big bloodshot eyes…

For fellow residents of the United States, this week leads up to Thanksgiving and the real beginning of our main holiday season. (Although, to be fair, the real holiday season doesn’t start until Yak Shaving Day.) For the antipodes, everyone is looking forward to spring. For my Canadian brethren, the next week marks a day of general relaxation, where they celebrate their crafting skills by carving lawn furniture out of blocks of frozen nitrogen on the front porch. Out here at the Triffid Ranch, though, this week is extremely important, because this is the start of winter dormancy for all of the temperate carnivorous plants out here.

If in case emphasizing the importance of giving your Venus flytrap a good long winter nap wasn’t clear before, it’s time to let it rest. Let it die back. If it gets frostburned, don’t panic. Just so long as it doesn’t dry out over the winter, it should be fine, and don’t try to force it to remain active by putting it under artificial light. The same goes for your Sarracenia, your temperate sundews, and especially any temperate butterworts. Let them sleep, and they’ll reward you in March and April with blooms and new growth.

Not that this marks the end of activities at the Triffid Ranch for the rest of the year. Anything but. In fact, I’m currently trying to check with friends in the Portland, Oregon area about getting about two dozen of this season’s ginkgo nuts. I have a project that needs ginkgos to work, and they absolutely HAVE to be Portland ginkgos. You’ll understand when it’s done.

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Cat Monday

Leiber

Have a Great Weekend

Upcoming Lectures: Dallas – Fort Worth Herpetological Society

The flytraps and Sarracenia pitcher plants are all going into dormancy, and the focus for the rest of the year is on getting ready for next year’s shows. HowEVER, if you’re in the Dallas/Fort Worth area this weekend, I’ll be the guest speaker for the Dallas – Fort Worth Herpetological Society meeting at the University of Texas at Arlington Life Sciences building on November 17. The subject at hand is a near and dear one: “Absolute Surefire Steps To Kill Your New Venus Flytrap”.

And on a sidenote, I’d also like to make a shoutout for friends on the West Coast of the US, because Sarracenia Northwest just started a series of winter open houses in December. Any excuse to go out there is a good one, and these winter open houses are really good excuses, so go out and have fun.

The Aftermath: Funky Finds Holiday Shopping Experience – 2

Funky Finds customer 1

Last year, I had to skip out on the autumn Funky Finds Holiday Shopping Experience show at Fort Worth’s Will Rogers Center because of the drought. Most of my plants survived the summer, but then September and October were so brutally hot and dry that the thought of doing a serious show in November was nearly impossible. I regretted it, and Jessica, the Funky Finds co-founder, regretted it, but we both figured that it was better to try again in 2012 than bring out a gaggle of stressed and heat-blasted plants to the 2012 show. Oh, how glad we both were that we held off for a year.

As usual, any excuse to come out to Fort Worth is a good one, and my last visit was long enough away that I didn’t realize how much the whole Fort Worth Stockyards area was changing. The new and improved Fort Worth Museum of Science & History is now fully operational, the National Cowgirl Museum just celebrated its tenth anniversary, and the Kimbell Art Museum appears to be halfway through an extensive expansion. Combine that with other events at the Will Rogers Center, which included a model train expo and a paint horse competition, and Texas Christian University’s big football game against Kansas State, and we had a LOT of people coming by. Not all of them stopped to look at carnivorous plants, but enough did…

Funky Finds customer 2

Funky Finds customer 3

Bhut Jolokia peppers

Due to a combination of an abnormally warm winter and a marginally cooler but extremely dry summer, Funky Finds was the perfect place to show off a collection of happy and healthy hot peppers. In particular, when I pointed out that most Capsicum peppers make good container plants, and that I had Bhut Jolokia peppers that already had pepper buds on them, you can imagine how quickly these left with new families.

Funky Finds customers 4

Funky Finds customer 5

Funky Finds customers 6

One of the aspects of doing Triffid Ranch shows that’s the most enjoyable is that I literally have no idea who’s coming through the doors at a given venue. At Funky Finds, this was more true than usual, because of the location of the Will Rogers Center. Teachers, grad students, musicians, rodeo stars…that’s half of the fun of a Funky Finds show. Think “Calgary Stampede“, with more cactus and fewer Mounties. And yes, I mean that as a compliment to both cities.

Funky Finds customer 7

Funky Finds customer 8

Funky Finds customer 9

Funky Finds customers 10

And that does it for 2012. I only have 360 days to get ready for the next one, so it’s going to be an absolute mindblower when everything’s done.

The Aftermath: Funky Finds Holiday Shopping Experience 2012 – 1

View of Funky Finds hall

You know you had fun at a plant exhibition when you can’t talk about it for a couple of days, and it’s taken me four days to recover from the Funky Finds Holiday Shopping Experience in Fort Worth last weekend. It’s a good thing this is the last official Triffid Ranch show of the year, because I’m going to have to work overtime next year to prepare for next November’s show.

Texas Triffid Ranch booth - front

To begin, say hello to the front of the booth, because this is the last year you’ll see it like this. That old vinyl banner has served the cause well for the last four years, but it’s time to retire it and get something a bit more fitting.

Texas Triffid Ranch booth - side

As a note to crafters and other potential proprietors, one of the best things about Funky Finds, for me, is the amount of room in its spaces. This year, it meant expanding around the corner and introducing new plant varieties, including the very popular Bhut Jolokia peppers. Next year…well, you’ll have to come out to find out, won’t you?

Texas Triffid Ranch booth - table view

Everyone at the show may have been gearing up for the winter holidays, but there’s room for a bit of Jack Skellington among the Santas, isn’t there?

Texas Triffid Ranch booth - de Marigny display

If you like the displays, you can imagine the customers…

It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood

Log pile

When the Czarina and I moved into our current residence, one of the draws was a pair of gigantic silverleaf maples shading the back yard. Part of the draw at first was that they were as old as the house, and had been planted by the original owners shortly after they moved in. Of course, that’s before I discovered the regular problems with silverleaf maples in Dallas’s climate, particularly involving fungal infections.

Log pile closeup

The first tree was already rather infected, and last year’s drought finished the job. The second one, closer to the house, appeared fine at the beginning of spring. It was after our wave of tornadoes in April, though, that its problems became evident. First, large branches came down repeatedly over the week, and then others started dying. When about half of the tree was dead, we realized that we had no real option, and either the tree came down via professional arborists or it was going to come down atop the house.

That’s the biggest problem with silverleaf maples today throughout Dallas and surrounding environs. According to several nursery people I’ve talked to, they were very popular in new subdivisions throughout the early Seventies, because they grew in quickly and they also grew lush. Within a few years, they were giving much-needed shade to houses during the summer, and they didn’t drop nuts like oaks or pecans. Sadly, much like our indigenous cottonwood trees, that fast growth usually leads to early death, and most of the silverleafs planted in our neighborhood have either come down in the past few years or been pruned to stumps with feeble water sprouts growing out of what little live wood remains.

Log interior

This isn’t to say that everyone hates older silverleaf maples. Smaller hollows make great woodpecker nests, and larger ones make excellent homes for opossums and treerats. Our various indigenous wood ants nest in dying branches, and termites just adore dead roots. The stump of the first silverleaf is slowly decaying and collapsing in on itself, and it’s made quite the habitat for worms, Texas ground skinks (Scincella lateralis), and slime molds.

If I’d had the time, with a big show that weekend, I would have rented a big wood chipper to turn the whole beast into mulch. That just wasn’t going to happen this week, so it went to the curb so the city could do it for me. As much as I knew I was going to miss this tree, I also knew, judging by the extent of the fungal rot, that one really good storm would have brought it down atop my office and the kitchen, and that wasn’t going to work.

To give an idea of how bad this was, the previous pictures show the hollows in the cut logs, but they don’t give an idea of the consistency. You know things are bad when you reach into a log and pull out punk wood the texture and consistency of the insides of a fresh jack-o-lantern. There was a lot of that slimy punk wood inside that tree, and it was even more impressive when you consider that we haven’t had any appreciable rainfall in the area for well over a month.

Log interior contents
As sad as it was to see it go, this just means that it’s time to plant anew. We already have two live oak saplings left by the original owners, and I’m moving one of those to the front to (eventually) shade the Czarina’s office during the summer. That leaves a big spot in the back that needs a good shade tree with a distinctive look. So…what do you think? Ginkgo, Texas persimmon, or loquat?

Cat Monday

Cadigan's first photo

And now, Cadigan’s first photo. This was the quick shot that convinced the Czarina to adopt her in the first place. It definitely says “Get me out of here, or I’ll shiv you in your sleep,” doesn’t it?

Have a Great Weekend

Have a Great Weekend

Maclura pomifera, redux

Maclura pomifera

Osage orange, horseapple, brainfruit…whatever you want to call it, this was a very good year for the local representatives of Maclura pomifera. This tree last year had maybe one fruit per clutch, and now it has anywhere between six and eight.

Maclura pomifera

And on discussions as to whether or not Osage oranges were a regular food item for the Pleistocene megafauna of Texas, such as Columbian mammoths and ground sloths, I really need to ask a few keepers at either the Dallas or Fort Worth Zoos if they’ve ever offered them to the resident elephants. I’m really curious as to how well modern-day megafauna relatives, other than horses, would take to them. All I can say for certain is that these aren’t anything that humans are going to want to eat any time soon, even with all of the catsup and Tabasco sauce in the world.

Maclura pomifera

November in Texas

Autumn in Texas

The summer wasn’t as intense as last year’s, but the tougher the summer, the more brilliant the autumn colors. Compared to, say, Vermont, we have little more than pastels, but we’re also getting autumn colors in shirtsleeve weather in the middle of November.

Autumn in Texas

Jalapeno popper recipes: JUST ONE FIX

My friend Michael Hultquist is a bad man. No, I take that back. He’s a bad, bad, BAD man. Positively EVIL. The sort of guy who comes up behind exhausted parents and gives their children four shots of espresso and a puppy. I can say this, because he just let me know that he’s put together a whole site dedicated to jalapeno pepper recipes. I mean, he already has multiple books on chile pepper recipes out there, and now he has to offer MORE? The MONSTER.

Very seriously, I’m glad of this for one big reason. I was first turned onto cream cheese-stuffed jalapenos via the Red Hot & Blue barbecue chain, where they were titled “Red Hot Chili Poppers”. Unfortunately, Red Hot & Blue removed them from the menu about four years ago, and repeated entreaties to bring them back have been unsuccessful. (I’ve forgiven them this trespass. The Walnut Hill location is still my choice for takeout just before screenings of The Walking Dead.) Now, though, NOW…it’s time to experiment with the basic idea. Even better, it’s time to try some of these with some of the best from the Chile Pepper Institute.

New Triffid Ranch show: Funky Finds, November 10-11

And with three days before the Funky Finds Holiday Experience in Fort Worth, it’s time to make plans. Come out if you can, wave hello if you can’t, and help celebrate the last Triffid Ranch show of 2012. I have Plans for 2013, but for now, let’s just say that 2012 has been a blast so far.

Autumn serendipity

In the house, it may be spring cleaning, but the best time to clean out the greenhouse from stem to stern is in autumn. Well, it is in Texas, where we’re still seeing temperatures considered “balmy” in higher latitudes. It’s warm enough that I can clear out all of the tropical plants, check for spots that need to be clipped, and set them outside for a few hours , but it’s also cool enough that the usual pests are at a minimum. After this year’s horrible mosquito season, I enjoy any day where the smell of citronella tiki torch oil doesn’t get into my pores.

This sudden stripdown and rebuild was particularly important, as the greenhouse was underneath an aging and rapidly dying silverleaf maple, Silverleaf maples were a rather popular addition to many North Texas suburbs forty years ago, where they promised rapid growth and extensive shade. Well, both are true, but they also live about as long as our indigenous cottonwoods, and anybody in the area knows that you never want to encourage cottonwoods in your back yard. This silverleaf offered plenty of shade for the first two years we were here, but it was obvious that it was having problems after last year’s drought, where its companion planting didn’t make it. The tornadoes in April only compounded matters, and it’s now become a wreck. The tree’s heartwood is now nothing but punk wood and fungus, the dead branches produce a never-ending fall of sawdust from boring beetles, and the live ones threaten to fall if you look at them cross-eyed. I regret not being able to leave it alone, but either it comes down, or it takes the whole adjoining house with it, and possibly a neighbor’s house as well. Sic transit gloria.

In order for the tree to come down, the greenhouse had to come down and relocate, and that’s where the joy came in. Last summer, I learned exactly why nobody ever uses citrus wood when examining my Buddha’s Hand citron: one of the branches that died during the 2011 freeze had sprouted a single water shoot before it expired, and now the rather larger branch was hanging onto its roots by a sliver of tissue and a handful of dry rot. Pull out the rooting hormone, starter trays, and lots of rich potting mix, and start setting cuttings. Surprisingly, more cuttings survived than died, and if the state department of agriculture gives a full approval that these are disease-free, they might be up for sale within the state of Texas next year. Of course, that’s also dependent upon what sort of winter we have this year, so I’m not saying anything else.

No, the real surprise was getting ready to pitch a flat of presumably dead seeds and seeing a flash of green. Last spring, I purchased a set of seeds for Roridula gorgonias, a singular carnivorous plant from South Africa. Both species of Roridula look like gigantic sundews, but they can’t absorb nutrients directly from the insects and other animals they capture. Instead, in their native biomes, they depend upon a symbiotic relationship with an indigenous ambush bug, where the bug feeds on the prey, it defecates on the leaves, and the plant absorbs nitrogen and phosphorus from the feces via special channels in its leaves. I’d had suspicions that established plants would do very well in the Dallas area, but the problem was getting established plants. Repeated attempts with seeds, both in standard peat mixes for carnivores and in peat mixes exposed to smoke, did no good, and I was about ready to give up.

It turns out that I was just a bit premature. This latest batch hadn’t sprouted at all over the spring or summer, but it finally started germinating in November. The trick, apparently, is both to expose the seeds to high heat (daytime highs above 40 degrees C) and to let the soil mix dry out for a week. The seedlings, obviously, can’t handle complete dryness, but they apparently need much drier conditions than in a standard germination flat to get established. I’ll try some experiments this winter, but between this and the sudden cold front we had two weeks ago, something set off the little monsters.

In the meantime, I understand all too well why Chinese panda breeders refuse to name a baby panda until its eyes open, because the mortality rate among infant giant pandas is so high. Hence, no pictures until we get the first full set of true leaves. That may happen before we know it, but you won’t know if the seedlings suddenly succumb to fungus. If they take off, though…

Image

Cat Monday

Cadigan

More from the State Fair of Texas: my perfect greenhouse

Greenhouse Exterior

I don’t like to think I’m greedy or anything. Honest. All I want is a new, reasonably-sized greenhouse to fill with carnivores, Wollemi pines, and ferns. The Czarina knows this, and she’s offered to help build a new one, with all of the features desperately needed for said new greenhouse. Underground parking, orbital disintegrator ray, emergency teleporters and sample decontamination chambers, and at least one good solid airlock. Nothing much, really. She’s used to seeing me viewing greenhouse catalogs and, in the immortal words of Sam Hurt, “have you ever seen a puppy dog being lowered very slowly into a vat of warm bacon fat?”

Oh, I had nothing on Pavlov’s dogs when we visited the Greenhouse on the Midway at the State Fair of Texas. I looked at her. She looked back at me. I smiled. She told me “NO. Not until we get a bigger house first.” Damn her for being practical: I just noted that we could build the house inside of the greenhouse and still have plenty of room.

Greenhouse interior

Greenhouse interior

Greenhouse conveyor

Greenhouse warning

Greenhouse interior

Greenhouse train tunnel

Greenhouse train

Greenhouse pumpkins

Greenhouse manguey

Greenhouse interior

I can see her point. We’re also going to need a bigger yard.

A quick digression into gallows humor

And now a slight digression into personal background. My father’s side of the family is a recent addition in the US, as my great-great grandparents migrated from England via Canada around the turn of the Twentieth Century, and my grandparents hopped the border during the Great Depression in a search for work. In fact, my grandfather secured US citizenship for the whole family by serving in the Coast Guard during World War II, and my father was born in Michigan shortly before the US entered the war. (That’s right: according to the dubious logic of a certain anencephalic US Representative in the district next to mine, I’m an anchor baby. Better stay on my good side, or we’ll all join forces and bomb the Baldwins again.)

It was the matter of discovering why my family made the move from England that soured me on the current attempts to turn Guy Fawkes Day, much like El Dia de los Muertos, into another “hipster Halloween”. My family was extremely Catholic back then, and the constant reminder every year of Gunpowder Treason and the subsequent state-approved Catholic bigotry was a deciding factor in a lot of families like mine deciding to move to more supportive (or at least less judgmental) climes. As I try to explain to well-meaning Americans whose knowledge of the whole Gunpowder Treason begins and ends with watching the movie adaptation of Alan Moore’s and David Lloyd’s graphic novel V For Vendetta, “I’m not saying that wishing ‘have a happy Guy Fawkes Day’ is as offensive to a British Catholic as wishing ‘have a happy Krystallnacht’ would be to a German Jew. I’m just saying that a lot of my relatives in the past would have punched out every last tooth in your mouth for saying it.”

(Admittedly, my family comes originally from both sides of the England/Scotland border, and many wouldn’t have needed a reason for a bit of the old ultraviolence on an unsuspecting Sassenach. This is a family where the filthiest four-letter words you could ever utter at a social gathering are “Last Call”.)

With that said, I’ll actually say something good about Guy Fawkes Day, and how it applies to horticulture. It’s underappreciated and often ignored, but I can thank the appropriation of Guido Fawkes in V For Vendetta for introducing many an unknowing comics fan to roses. Specifically, trust Alan Moore to popularize the otherwise insanely obscure rose cultivar “Violet Carson“, just to be obscure. Forget black orchids, man-eating plants, or Pink Bunkadoos: this is a fantastical plant you can actually own. Those who regularly care for roses can appreciate some of Fawkes’s sentiments, too, as the annual cleaning and shaping occasionally makes me want to get thirty-six barrels of gunpowder and blast them into low-Earth orbit.

Thusly, no political comment or social comment is made with the following image. For everyone trying to get their tea roses to behave, though, or to keep their miniature roses from applying for UN citizenship before taking over the rest of the planet, we can all appreciate the sentiment.

VFor Violet Carson

Have a Great Weekend

With one last big show this coming weekend (the Funky Finds Experience in Fort Worth) and a last-minute lecture for the Dallas – Fort Worth Herpetological Society the weekend after that, this is pretty much my soundtrack for November.