You Grow Girlâ„¢

Why is it that the only living things that aren’t phased by the extreme heat are insects and weeds?

There is a weed here that some people refer to as “the scourge called spurge” and others treat as a groundcover. It all depends on your frame of reference. For instance, when we first moved into our house here in the desert, I angrily ripped out those three weed seedlings that popped up. I should have left them, because they were the only green things in the yard that first year! One, I found out later, was a lovely little wildflower, hawkweed. Yes, even though I saw the nice little orange flower, my body bent over it and my hands grasped it. It was if I couldn’t control myself! I was powered by this mentality of “weeds – bad!” Let me tell you, when you live in a landscape which I first compared to the surface of the moon, you really learn to appreciate whatever’s there. It’s a bit of phytoarchaeology in that you have excavate some rocks to find these little plants – called belly plants – literally, you have to be on your belly to see them.

Ok, there are bigger ones – mostly cactus and sagebrushes, which you don’t want to get too close to anyway. Which brings me to another point. Why are so many desert plants unfriendly? Is it because they feel they have to proliferate the hostile feeling of the environment? Well, maybe, but there actually is a scientific explanation for it. The thorns and spines and all-over prickliness are mechanisms to protect the plants from losing what little photosynthesizing tissue they may have. These little apparatus, shade the plant, as well as protect it from thirsty predators. Yes, I said thirsty. Some desert critters can only get water from desert vegetation. So desert plants really are pretty amazing in the way that they survive.

One plant here in the desert simply cannot be appreciated, except by naïve Midwesterners who have never been here before. Hankering for the flowing canopies of green vegetation back home, when I first saw the swaying tamarisk trees along the Colorado River, I thought they were beautiful. And the millions of pink flowers – I hadn’t seen much color in the desert – refreshing! And then I learned about them. Brought to the West as an ornamental, they have taken over waterways, clogging them and displacing native vegetation. You cannot get rid of them. Noxious weeds are a real problem out here. In older times, there were lists of weeds that ranchers found noxious to their cattle. Today the lists name weeds that are taking over the west. I think the list should now be called “obnoxious weeds.”

Now back to the garden. There are other “landscape plants” that are escaping cultivation. One is Mexican evening primrose Oenothera. Warnings are now being put on these plants that are sold at garden centers. They are advertised as being “great for open, unfettered spaces.” Major understatement. I’m still picking them out of my lawn, six years after I supposedly killed them in the flower bed. Now don’t get me wrong, we southwestern gardeners are happy to find plants that grow well in our climate. It’s just that some do too well.

A popular weed in the Las Vegas valley is bermuda grass. While historically this was the grass chosen for turf, it has been poo-pooed by the hotel industry in favor of the lush, green-all-year-long fescue types. The thing about bermuda grass is that it’ll grow here without much ado. And grow. And spread. Funny thing is, a lot of fescue lawns are invaded by the bermuda grass. Think it’s trying to tell us something?

We have those garden weeds common back east, too. Dandelions, thistle. Surprised? Where could they have come from? Let’s see, they could have come in with the other idiots moving here from back east. Or, they can come in with the nursery stock that we bring in to green up our barren little valley. All that nursery stock comes from California, by the way. In fact, it’s amazing what’s moved into our valley in the past ten to twenty years. We’re all here for the same reason, to find a wide-open new territory to grow in.

To seek out and destroy civilizations, to boldly go where no plant has gone before!

I guess that’s why they call them pests.