Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter

from the April 21, 2007 Newsletter issued from Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, QUERÉTARO, MÉXICO
ANACAHUITE, THE "TEXAS OLIVE"
Along the gravel road up to the convent a small tree with a dark, gnarly trunk was putting on a show with its two-inch wide, white, yellow-throated blossoms, seen below:

Anacahuite, Texas Olive, Cordia boissieri

In some places this is called Anacahuite, and up north it's often labeled Texas Olive and marketed as a pretty tree able to survive in sunny, dry places. In fact, judging from nursery web pages, it's almost become a mainstay of hot-weather, xeric landscape gardening. The tree is CORDIA BOISSIERI of the Borage or Forget- me-not Family.

If you were with me in the Yucatan you might remember the red-flowered Ciricote so conspicuous in the dry- season scrub. Ciricote was Cordia sebestena, and Anacahuite is Cordia boissieri, so the two trees are very closely related.

On certain hot, dry, scrubby slopes in this area the white-blooming Anacahuites are so spectacular that you're put in mind of spring Dogwoods flowering up North -- despite the slopes' shimmering waves of heat and the air's dusty bite.