Name That Plant

Native plants and gardening are important parts of my life. I’ve studied Kansas wildflower books for thirty years or more and gardened almost that long. Many times I’ve scattered seeds of native grasses and forbs in our five-acre pasture. Many times I’ve planned, planted, and harvested a vegetable garden. But that was in Kansas.

Now I’m in Arizona looking at a landscape that seems exotic and strange to me. In our yard alone there are several plants I’ve yet to identify, although I knew this was an agave right away. It’s almost as iconic of the Sonoran Desert as the saguaro cactus.

Most people’s xeriscaped yards have at least one agave. The agave, also called the century plant because of the myth that the agave blooms only when it’s a century old. Actually an agave may bloom in ten years or twenty or thirty. This one in our neighborhood is sending up a bloom stalk that strongly resembles a giant spear of asparagus. It could become forty feet high before it quits going up and sends out blooms. Then the plant will die. That’s just the way it is with agave.

I also recognized that his plant is an aloe, but I’ve never seen one this large or with blooms like this.

I have no idea what this plant is, but it’s putting up bloom stalks. What will the blooms look like? What color will they be? Stay tuned.

This afternoon I noticed a viney shrub growing by the casita wall. It Iooks like some sort of honeysuckle.

It took me a while to connect this plant to the yuccas we have at home. First I noticed the seedpods, which are shaped differently from ours but have the same growth habit. Then I noticed the lance-like leaves and the white threads along their sides. Native Americans use yucca strands as threads, I think.

It’s odd how study of one ecosystem’s plants paves the way for recognition of the familial traits of another ecosystem’s. I’m starting to feel more at home here, with different, but familiar flora around me.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer