MEXICAN PONYTAILS

Most of my hike back to town took place in cattle-chewed, cactus-rich scrub. On my second night out I camped next to a plant some potted-plant-loving North Americans might find vaguely familiar, the one shown at the right.

Local Mexicans call it Palmilla, saying it's a kind of palm, but if you look closely you'll see that it's very unpalmlike. For one thing, it's stem branches, and palm trunks rarely branch. For another, the leaves are neither palmately nor pinnately compound, like the vast majority of palms, but rather are long and slender like a sword's blade. Some of these plants are fruiting now and if you could see the fruit you'd see that it's not at all like a typical palm fruit -- like a small coconut -- but rather it's a dry, lightweight capsule.

In fact, this palmlike tree is a member of the Lily Family, not the Palm. In North America small potted specimens with gray trunks expanding enormously at their bases, and topped with topknots of arching, slender, green blades are sold under the trade names of Mexican Ponytail, Ponytail Palm, Bottle Palm, Elephant's Foot and other names as well. The species sold in pots is usually Beaucarnea recurvata. A page showing a potted Beaucarnea and describing its care is at http://www.plant-care.com/1602-ponytail-palm.html.

I'm not sure which species is shown in the picture. The common Mexican Ponytail, Beaucarnea pliabilis, is shown in the next section below. Another, much rarer, is Beaucarnia ameliae, found around lagoons along the Yucatan coast, and the one in the picture may be that. If you can help me on this ID I'd appreicate it.

Whoever the Beaucarnea in the picture was, it rose above the surrounding low, thorny scrub rather majestically, lending the landscape an extra touch of exotic feeling. In the picture you can see its swollen trunk-base, explaining one of it's names, "Elephant's Foot." This swollen trunk serves as a water-storage structure. Overwatered, store-bought potted specimens often possess grotesquely large, spherical boles with teeny, green topknots.

On the night I pitched my tent next to the Beaucarnea in the picture the wind roared across the scrub from dusk to dawn. Several times in profound darkness I awakened and just listened to the wind streaming through the tree's jutting-out branches and causing its stiff blades to flap and clack against one another. It was a homey feeling lying beside such a distinguished being, knowing its roots ran beneath where I lay on the ground.

In the morning an endemic Yucatan Wren came with its husky krrohrrrrr complaint glaring at my tent as he hung onto the Beaucarnea the way you expect a wren to do, even an endemic one.

"Krrohrrrrr yourself," I replied similarly huskily, feeling just splendid, with a full night of wind-roar and Beaucarnea-flapping and -clacking energy churning around inside me.

FROM THE NOVEMBER 10, 2008 NEWSLETTER

MEXICAN PONYTAILS
Here and there in the woods and sometimes planted around people's homes you run into a succulent-stemmed plant you've probably seen many times as a potted plant or indoor-garden ornamental. It's shown at the right.

At its base the plant abruptly enlarges into a bulbous water-storage organ, in the picture mostly concealed by leaf litter. In plant shops often the overwatered plants on sale consist of nothing but brown, turnip- like bases from which long, green blades sprout. A Mexican Ponytail may grow for years maintaining its single slender stem but eventually if given a chance side branches develop. I've seen much-branched plants 15 feet tall and taller.