the XERIC ZONE
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Quercus : : : The Xeric Zone > Foundations :: Landscape Notes, Cool
Season 2001 - 2002 |
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Landscape
Notes, Cool Season 2001 - 2002 |
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The dryness that began in 2001 has become more of the start of a
long-term drought for the Great American Southwest, including the Albuquerque
area and the Rio Grande valley. Our cool
season started late this year. In fact, the warm season (or growing season)
lasted a record 245 days or so, finally ending a few days before
Thanksgiving…at least above the valley bottom. Plants grew as if there was no
tomorrow; many flowered until early December. That is, unless they got no
irrigation: drought intensified.
This
winter proved to be much better than 2000-2001 for landscapes featuring
dryland plantings, since fall was more gradual and far less damp. The coldest
nights of the season occurred in early March (13F at my home), which was
right when plants were coming out of dormancy. In valley areas, I heard of
many cacti that ended up as mush with their low right at or below 0F: they
did not fare well. One client did not irrigate her newly installed landscape
for months, and several dead trailing rosemary were the result…but somehow,
an equally young escarpment live oak nearby looks great…go figure? Hopefully,
you were not fooled into not watering this winter, because the cool air this
winter was accompanied by the driest airmasses I have seen in the southwest,
as a steady parade of cold fronts swept in from the northwest, wrung out of
all moisture by the time they reached central New Mexico. As life
slowed down, I took some short seed collecting trips to help increase the
availability of our own native plants. The longest trip, in early December,
was to collect seed from soapberry trees in southeast Colorado, honey
mesquite from near Kenton, Oklahoma, and other plants in remote places like
Sabinoso, Ft Sumner, Mosquero, and Colonias. Another brief seed collecting
trip was with colleagues Horst Kuenzler and Ted Hodoba that same month,
culminating in many pounds of screwbean mesquite seed near Belen, with their
corkscrew-shaped fruit. I figured it was a good idea to get seed from plants
nearby before those hardy populations are gone, since careless
"development" locally has destroyed many native plants'
northernmost ranges. That was the recent fate of the screwbean mesquite once
found south of Bernalillo. In the hands of a large grower, all of that
collected seed will become available along with the oaks I collected from
last summer. As my friend from Colorado said
on a visit last year: lets create landscapes as great as our unique
architecture. Albuquerque,
New Mexico March 28, 2002 |
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