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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] In praise of native trees in the Southwest
  • Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2005 17:50:06 -0700


In praise of native trees in the Southwest
02/26/2005
http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=104134
Patrick Pynes, Director of Gardens and Horticulture
The Arboretum at Flagstaff

Nearly 16 years ago, I moved from the lush, cool green of east Tennessee's
Smoky Mountains to the bright sunshine and brown mesas of New Mexico's Rio
Grande Valley. This radical change in physical environments came as a
shock. For about a year, I felt dislocated in the high desert. I missed the
green forests and cold, rushing creeks of home.

To add to this homesickness, my sense of space seemed out of kilter. The
vast open spaces of New Mexico were thrilling but disorienting. I loved
being able to see sixty miles across the desert to the snow-capped Jemez
Mountains, but I could not get a bearing on the actual distance between
things. I realize now that I did not understand how the different pieces of
the visible landscape fit together as a meaningful whole. The relationships
between different parts of the landscape (Interstate 40, Sandia Mountains,
Rio Grande, etc.) were not yet clear to me.

I found myself spending a lot of time walking in the bosque of the Rio
Grande. (If you've ever been to the banks of the Verde River, then you know
something about the Rio Grande bosque.) The bosque is a rich riparian
forest, a ribbon of precious water, trees and shade in an otherwise arid
landscape. In the bosque, I found a place that was familiar enough to
remind me of Tanasi, but different enough to begin teaching me about my new
home.

The bosque helped me to make the transition between the Southeast and the
Southwest. I don't know exactly when it happened, but after about a year I
became completely comfortable within the local landscape. For this reason,
and for everything it taught me about the land and people of New Mexico and
the greater Southwest, the bosque will always be a place that I carry with
me, with great affection.

In the bosque, I first encountered the cottonwood, one of the Southwest's
most beautiful and important trees. As NAU's Tom Whitham and other
researchers have shown, the cottonwood is a keystone species for our
bioregion.

The lives of so many plants, birds, insects and other species depend upon
these trees. Healthy cottonwood trees mean that abundant water is present,
on or below the surface. Hopi carvers create katsina dolls from cottonwood
roots. Katsinas bring snow and rain.

Unlike Albuquerque, the Flagstaff area is not blessed with a bosque. Two
thousand feet higher and much cooler (in more ways than one!), we are
blessed with a portion of the largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest in
the world. This forest stretches across the Mogollon Rim, from Arizona into
New Mexico. We live within this forest. As such, we are a vital part of it.

My admiration for ponderosa pines equals my affection for cottonwoods, and
not only because my paternal ancestors are named for this conifer. Without
the ponderosa, there would be no Flagstaff. The name for our home place
(FlagSTAFF) refers to this native tree.

Cottonwoods are rare around here, but we are blessed with another important
native deciduous tree. This is the aspen, close cousin to the cottonwood.
Aspens and cottonwoods belong to the same botanical family (Populus).
Naturally speaking, aspens indicate the presence of fire, just as
cottonwoods indicate water. Being sun lovers, they colonize recently burned
places. Culturally speaking, aspens also indicate what time it is. Their
golden leaves tell us that winter's cold is near, and in springtime, their
fresh green leaves mean that warm summer days are imminent. Many of us tell
time by observing the changing of the aspens, in both seasons.

Naturally speaking, there are no ponderosas or aspens growing in the
Southwest's lower elevation bosques. It's too hot down there. And there are
few (Fremont) cottonwoods growing up here in our pine forests. It's too
cold.

But Flagstaff and the bosque do have at least one important tree in common.
You'll find it growing among the cottonwoods along the Verde River and Rio
Grande, and you'll find it growing in downtown Flagstaff. This deciduous
tree is the dominant species in our urban forest. Lately this weak-limbed
non-native has been battered by heavy wet snows, and large piles of its
broken branches are heaped on sidewalks all over the city.

The tree I'm referring to, of course, is the Siberian elm (Ulmus pumila).
Like many of us who live in Flagstaff, the Siberian elm is not native to
the Colorado Plateau, but it has certainly found a home here. While I have
no affection at all for the Siberian elm, I have developed a grudging
respect for it. In a future column I will go into more detail about this
infamous non-native "weed," and all that it tells us about our home place.

The author is Director of Gardens and Horticulture for The Arboretum at
Flagstaff. Of Irish and Cherokee descent, he holds a Ph.D. in American
Studies from the University of New Mexico.






  • [Livingontheland] In praise of native trees in the Southwest, Tradingpost, 02/26/2005

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