Elephant

Bursera microphylla


This little tree only grows in really special places were the is no frost danger. The trunk is elephant like, swelling with moisture and peeling its bark off. It is very similar to Myrrh gum....you can cut the tree and collect the resin, although we have yet to do that. You dont even hurt the tree, it just bleeds some of its amazing resivoir. The resin and to a lesser extent the twigs and leaves are a great white blood cell stimulant. They raise the wbc count an as such have great implications for all immune compromising diseases -- although since most cancer therapies are tested for efficacy by how many white blood cells they kill, this poses problems for people in hospital settings where they are doing the cheapest tests possible instread of actually testing for the effects of the chemo in the blood. If you are not in the hosptial under such setting, this, and myrrh are a great option.

The purple berries are a favortie treat of birds and they keep the production slowly happening slowly over a 4 months period to keep thier seed stratifiers near by.
I love this tree.
Neil and I sought it out on the slopes of the highway that runs out of Yuma (a total cess pool of a town) on the border of CA, we scrambled up the side of the cliff overlooking I-8 right past a border patrol stop and "sampled" some foliage. Not more than 15 mintues passed before we were being buzzed by a helicopter. The man at the controls flying low and tilting the craft so he could look down and report what he saw in his head set -- needless to say we got out of there asap. Anyone walking anywhere off a known road or trail is suspect mexican until proven innocent. Run!



We also found another stand of this precious tree in a basin inside Organ Pipe National Monument, the amazing park half closed due to teh fact that the narcotrafficante were running their hummers full speed across the border at night and destroying the ecosystem and land in order to deliver thier cargo -- we had to hike into this section due to the closures.

The park is names after this cactus that looks like organ pipes.

retroactive blogging (is that legal NGs?)

We made it to the oasis and back, narry a mirage stifled the way, although the wind blew its best, trying to whip us, still we persevered.



he's SWSBM class of 2006 wandering thru the desert, the botanizing fools!


here's a classic scene of the man at work -- the camp chair on the pavement. Usually all of us are gathered around him like kids at story hour. He zips around on a little scooter so we stuck to the packed earth and paved roads for lectures and meandered off over the hills on our own when we was finished lecturing...



We drove east down highway 8, back into AZ, after a week of camping in the Anza-Borego Desert in Southern California. We had a great time getting to know our classmates better and checking out the real oases of the desert. We hiked to a couple different groves of desert palms out in the unbelievable desert. Today we stopped in a place called Dateland, for a famous date shake, which was unbelievably good, and unbelievably sweet at the same time; glycemic index 12,000. There is a crazy date plantation there where they hand pollinate all the date palms with their 5 foot flowers!

Yesterday we saw a beat up old bus driving slowly down the highway; we thought to ourselves, who could be inside such a vehicle, another traveling hippie circus, a church youth group? No, it was packed to the brim with aging Mexican males. Where could such a busload of people be traveling so close to the border under the watchful eye of the omnipresent border Patrol? Today we saw their destination. Highway bound we headed out from the Kofa mountains: volcanic teeth of red, rhyolite rock with a hidden grove of California Fan palms and hummingbirds high in their crevices. We began to the pass the 100s of acres of vegetable fields at rest we had passed on the way in Sunday afternoon. This time the fields were alive with workers, the ones bused in daily from Mexico. The same beat up buses with government signs on the sides denotes the program that allows campsinos to labor for the day, week, etc. in the American agribusiness. Literally hundred of men and women were hand picking and packaging lettuce, cabbage and lemons and loading the “Foxy” Brand boxes on to huge flat bed trailers. This was barely 9AM and they had a third of the 18-wheeler already stacked and strapped down with boxes. It just seemed crazy, that here at the end of the Colorado river, that the last vestiges of that mighty force could be diverted to the flood irrigation we saw happening. Water flooded and pooled on the sides of the road, while the river dwindled to a creek before it entered into Mexico. Not much of the mighty force that carved ye ole Grand Canyon resonates here.


a bad picture with no people. but you get the idea.

3-28
Last night we stayed in the Saguaro Cactus National Monument….we slept in a field of the squbby, chubby and mostly just plain tall icons of this state. It’s like a dream waking up every morning when the sun comes up and deciding where to go next, just rolling down the roads in the old honey wagon stopping at places that interest us. Every night we stay in some new nook of this state. We love having everything we need right here in the car, cooking the best food on mom and dad’s old Coleman stove and snuggling down on the, now classic, futon mattress.




Camp

Two days ago on the way to the Kofa Mountains (a witty little contraction made from “King of Arizona” mine) at yet another random border patrol stop, the congenial guard told us to watch out for stray military parts and unexploded bombs – great. I told him that if he saw us the next morning, that would mean we didn’t get blown up. Little did we know that where as the map might call a land mass a “wilderness reserve” the military sees things differently. The “Yuma Proving Grounds” are a delightful little parcel of thousands of acres of tank staging ground. General Paton also used the area in during the first WW, to test all kinds of old school stuff – lucky us.


Kofa Mountains Palm Oasis -- the palms have "retreated" into a canyon deep inside this mountain over the last few hundred years of drought....

Well, we just passed the Best Western Space Age Lodge, an eccentric little place all decked out with a Sputnik theme…I think its time to move on.

Wild Plants

Neil and I got a lot of wild crafting done this trip. It has been exciting to learn so many new plants and their uses for humans. We have also revisited many old friends that we have used for years and found new ways to look at them too. We picked Hyptis, the Desert Lavender, which was exploding with blooms after the snow and melt in Southern California. The bees loved the blossoms as much as we did and found that the flowers and leaves are n excellent tonic for the lungs – and it makes a great tea.

We learned of a new plant call Rattany (Krameria geryii), that is semi-parasitic and looks like a giant bunch of whitish to maroon sticks, but if you look closely, some of the bushes have amazing purple flowers like an orchid and the seeds pods are delightful spiny balls. This plant, among a myriad other uses, makes a great mouth wash to sooth swollen gums and pained teeth. It is great for chronic mouth degeneration, gingivitis, and especially those problems caused by a deficient GI tract; dry mouth, a lack of saliva and dragon breath!

The white sage may be the quintessential plant of the desert west and when we found it all else seemed to fall away. Neil sat by the plant noticing the frantic activity of the bees. Since we have been studying taxonomy, botany and morphology of plants, we have become increasing amazed at the form that each plant takes and just how specialized it is. This flower knew exact ally how to attract it pollinators; look at the way the bees land in search of nectar and meet the pollen. White sage can kill just about any organism that grows on our skin and shouldn’t be there. It’s also what you see in most commercial smudge sticks - -if you’ve smelled it, you’ll never forget it.



Peony Root was a plant I never expected to encounter here or anywhere else in the wild – I have already read about it, but always suspected it was the garden variety of those showy flowers. But, here in the highlands of the desert, where a stream runs down and the soil is sandy and fires are no strangers, we saw the unmistakable foliage of the peony. This flower has fewer petals than its cultivated cousin and stores its nutrients in tubers that are easily gathered without destroying the plant. The tincture of the plant is a truly feminine pink color and sooths the pain of endometriosis.



Oh, and Chia, who knew it was such an important traditional food, a calorie displacer and a great source of fiber? Not just for pets and more. Here it is thriving after a fire. What a beautiful color!


And although we had no idea what Michael was talking about when we gave the lecture we soon came to understand just what rancid coffee could do to your kidneys and urinary tract. This plant, the Buckwheat bush (Erigonym fasiculata) is known as the “trucker plant” because of its ability to sooth irritated kidneys from rancid oils, excessive holding of the urine and too much sugar. After we ran out of good coffee and had to stop in at Fry’s….we were glad we had dried some for tea.

A taste of home

The East coast swept thru bisbee two weeks ago, bringing snow to Bisbee as well as two friends:

Rose....




(rose measures her size against the giant cottonwood trees at the San Pedro River)










...and Meghan

(you're looking a little too scottish there lass for the St. Patty's Day festivities, or is that amy??)











We sang, we danced, we dined and we toured the town, then we played cards and drank PBR.















Once, when we left the house unmanned and unwomaned, we returned to find our pet seal getting drunk on the nectar of the poor!

Horrified we wrenched the can from his lips and finished it off for him.


















Ah, Bisbee......