April 19, 2018
AN OCEAN OF SWEET ACACIA
Imagine my condition when on Thursday, March 29th, after riding buses day and night and sitting in bus terminals since the previous Saturday, and having just failed in my effort to get a long-term visa for Mexico, I found myself with a tent inside west Texas's Amistad National Recreation Area with, spreading before me, all the peaceful, restful, "primitive camping" possibilities a backpacker could want. You can see what my beleaguered mind and blurred eyes beheld as I wandered into the area at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180419ac.jpg
That's a view from the hiking trail between the Visitor Information Center and Spur 454. There you see how generally flat the landscape is. The reservoir is surrounded by a savanna-like vegetation of low, spreading, widely spaced trees, with clumpgrasses and small shrubs between the trees. The US/Mexico border runs down the reservoir's middle, though everything seen in the picture is on the US side. We're about eight miles northwest of the Texas border town of Del Río, whose Mexican consulate I'd come to visit. The reservoir's high-water mark is about 1124 ft in elevation (343m).
In the above picture notice the golden-hued trees. Those are Sweet Acacias, also called Huisache (we-SACH-eh); it's ACACIA FARNESIANA, and we've looked at the trees' flowers, fruits, leaves, and the resin that oozes from their wounds -- resin from which some of the world's most expensive perfumes is derived -- but we've never shown them in such vast numbers. Our Sweet Acacia page is at https://www.backyardnature.net/q/acacia-f.htm
Sweet Acacia often dominates vast stretches of arid land, particularly in the Chihuahuan Desert, at the very edge of which is situated Amistad Reservoir. Sweet Acacia is a tough, ecologically important, remarkably useful tree, but the point I want to make about it now is that when I walked into that desert looking for a place to camp and get a good night's sleep, the whole landscape was not only quiet and inviting, but also dizzyingly fragrant with Sweet Acacia flower perfume.
The trees were golden hued because I'd arrived at the exact peak of Sweet Acacia's flowering season. Not long after the above landscape picture was taken, I'd set up my tent beneath a Sweet Acacia tree, and you can see what it looked like above my tent at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180419ad.jpg
That night we had a full moon with the above branches resolving themselves into artfully reticulating silhouettes. In the moist night air, the blossoms' perfume grew even more intoxicating. But I rested too profoundly for either the perfume or nearby howling Coyotes to hold my attention for more than a few seconds. It was the solid earth beneath my back and the peacefulness that most I needed, and those things I was profoundly grateful for receiving.
*****
BIG TROPICAL INDIGO SNAKE
At first glance Amistad's landscape looks flat, but when you're hiking you're constantly ascending or descending the shallow slopes of an unending network of gullies or arroyos. Atop the rises sometimes you find a pure stand of Sweet Acacia, and sometimes if you penetrate them they give way to a shoulder-high thicket of light-gray-leafed bush known as Cenizo, which we profile at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/w/cenizo.htm
If the Cenizo-blanketed ridge is high and dry enough, inside the thicket it may open up and have only gravel, clumpgrass and maybe a few cacti. In one such spot I encountered the big snake shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180419id.jpg
Notice that the snake's eye looks a little cloudy. I think he was about to molt, the eye's covering was coming loose, and this caused the snake to be somewhat blind. Whatever the case, the snake seemed to know that something was nearby, but apparently didn't see me, for after the above picture was taken he slithered around and passed right below me, not a foot away from my boot, providing the nice picture of his arrowhead-shaped head at the front of his massive body, shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180419ie.jpg
At first glance I'd have sworn that the snake was eight or at least seven feet long, but now having him right below me I could see that he was only five or six feet long (1.7m). My view from above enabled a close-up nicely showing the head's scale pattern -- in case there's any doubt about what this species is -- shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180419if.jpg
This is the Indigo Snake, who we've met several times in Mexico, and whose page is at https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/indigo.htm
On that page we show a mostly cream-colored, immature snake, so I'm glad to finally have a big adult to show, because this snake is famous for its large size -- considered the longest snake native to the United States.
Actually, the US is home to two Indigo species, the Eastern Indigo, Drymarchon couperi, distributed throughout Florida and nearby contiguous states, and this one, Drymarchon corais, in the US known as the Texas Indigo, found in southern Texas. However, Drymarchon corais occurs from here to all through Mexico and Central America into South America, so it is better known as the Tropical Indigo. Until recently, all indigo snakes in the US were considered to be Drymarchon corais, but now the Florida population has been split off to constitute a different species.
In our pictures the snake is flattening his head. This is something the species does when individuals feel threatened, trying to make themselves look larger than they already are. Really upset individuals may also hiss and vibrate their tails, producing a rattling sound, which can be disconcerting in rattlesnake country like this.
Indigo snakes are active during the day, and ours was clearly foraging, looking for prey. I read that Indigos feed on a variety of mammals, birds, frogs and other snakes, including rattlesnakes and cottonmouths. They're even known to feed on young gopher tortoises, which is a little surprising, since Indigo snakes often use gopher tortoise burrows as shelter.
*****
TAMARISK FLOWERING
Amistad Reservoir's water level fluctuates wildly, depending on rains upstream, rising precipitously when the remains of a hurricane pass through. In a certain spot sometimes deeply submerged and other times high and dry, much-branched, wispy-looking, woody shrubs or small trees turned up forming a thicket nearly devoid of all other plants. They bore dense heads of tiny, pinkish flowers, which showed up nicely in morning sunshine, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180419tk.jpg
The flowers arranged themselves in numerous spike-like racemes at the ends of branches, almost looking like willow catkins, as seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180419tl.jpg
The blossoms themselves were attractive but not particularly unusual or distinctive looking, as you can confirm at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180419tm.jpg
However, in the above close-up, look at the green stem arising above the flowers. Instead of with normal leaves, the stem bears only green, overlapping scales, similar to what we see on junipers and cedars, though junipers and cedars are gymnosperms and flowers like these occur only on angiosperms. A closer look at the juniper-like stems with their scale-like leaves is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180419tn.jpg
So, this is this plant's big novelty -- that it bears typical angiosperm blossoms on a body that looks like it belongs to a gymnosperm.
Our plant is a species of tamarisk, genus Tamarix, in the Tamarisk Family, the Tamaricaceae, whose species all are native to the Mediterranean region and Africa to eastern Asia. Therefore, our lakeside shrubs are invasive. In fact, the TexasInvasives.Org website lists Tamarix ramosissima -- there called Salt Cedar -- as a noxious weed, and the species is further listed in the Invasive Plant Atlas of the US.
The TexasInvasives.Org web page for tamarisk is unsparing about the species' disagreeable features. Tamarisks grow long tap roots that intercept deep water tables; they degrade native wildlife habitat by outcompeting and replacing native plant species; they increase the frequency, intensity and effect of fires and floods, and; they provide little food for native wildlife species. To make matters worse, each bush can produce thousands of minuscule, hair-tufted seeds that can be dispersed by both wind and water.
The TexasInvasives.Org page profiles Tamarix ramosissima, and as far as I can see our plants look exactly like the Tamarix ramosissima shown on their page. However, I'm not at all sure that our plant is Tamarix ramosissima, and maybe nowadays nobody can be sure. That's because Tamarix taxonomy is in a mess, with little agreement among specialists as to what's a species and what's just a variation of one or a few variable species, plus often hybridization between species occurs. The online Flora of North America currently lists eight species that have become naturalized in North America ("gone wild"), with several other species occasionally found in gardens.
All that being said, that day when I came upon my first tamarisk thicket, I was glad to meet the plant. With global warming and the expected mass extinction of many species, it may turn out that aggressive, super-adaptable plants like tamarisk will be the only survivors in some or many environments. Nowadays I find myself admiring vigor and staying-power wherever I find it.
*****
REFRESHER COURSE ON WHAT I BELIEVE IN
This month's visa-renewing trip to Texas unfolded as if a guiding hand sought to remind me of why I live and think as I do. The refresher course began right before the trip when my Mérida/Florida friend Paul presented me with Robin Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, which I read during the trip and now have finished. I passed on what I felt were that book's most important and beautiful messages in the April 3rd Newsletter.
Basically, the book says that the Creation Stories we tell ourselves profoundly affect us, and that the stories of indigenous Americans better prepare us for living in harmony with Life on Earth than does the Eve-banished-from-Paradise story we with European roots tell ourselves. Kimmerer reminds us that we're free to tell ourselves whatever story we want. Braiding Sweetgrass provided a new perspective seeming to support the decisions I made long ago to detach myself from my culture's dominant religion, and basic assumptions about what our lives are all about.
Camping in the desert instructed me from a different perspective. Ants working in a frenzy and suffering loss of life for tiny crumbs of oatmeal reminded me of this: We should assess proper value to things life can't get along without, such as drinkable water, clean air, protein and enough personal space to keep one's sanity. "One's numbers must be balanced with the availability of life's limiting factors," the ants told me, and then overhead flew a pair of Maroon-fronted Parrots, their calls like raucous laughs despite their being IUCN-listed endangered species. Especially in view of all the city sprawl, habitat destruction and waste of food and other resources I saw during the trip, these desert ants and endangered parrots urged me toward even greater frugality than I've practiced in life so far.
Then on the afternoon of April 6 as I sat in the bus terminal of Saltillo, Coahuila, downloading email, a message from Eric in Mérida drifted in, telling me of a good source of information on the life and teachings of Baruch or Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677). Eric's mail brought to mind the pleasure I'd felt back during college upon discovering Spinoza. Already then, in the late 1960s, I decided that no one could ever do a better job articulating a view of life and the Universe that made as much sense as Spinoza. For me, here are some of the most important of Spinoza's insights:
Finally, as usual when I travel day and night on overly air-conditioned buses filled with coughing neighbors, I got a bad cold. "And don't forget," the cold-virus reminded me, "that no matter how profound and elegant is your philosophy of life, in the end you're still captive in a biological body that thrives, withers or dies in accordance with its own circumstances. You can make the body stronger with exercise and good nutrition, but that won't save you if you inherited lethal genes, or end up in a war zone, or in front of a drunk driver. In short, amid all this philosophizing, keep in perspective just what an insignificant, vulnerable, evanescent entity you are, and if you can't accommodate that insight, then at least try to keep a sense of humor about it."
And so, having been reminded by indigenous-American wisdom to show my thankfulness for what Nature/God gives us, during my trip I ceremoniously pissed on desert clumpgrass, offering up my water and nitrogen. I have coughed, wheezed and sneezed surrounded by mountaintop coyotes howling and yelping beneath an almost-full Moon, I've taken counsel with ants and fossils, indulged my passion for a rainbow of cacti, and I've sat long hours on buses thinking about Spinoza's teachings.
I feel a lot better for having done all this, so maybe I'm on the right track, and maybe having to break my routines by leaving the country every six months isn't such a bad deal after all.
*****
Best wishes to all Newsletter readers,
Jim
All previous Newsletters are archived at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/.
