Home improvement for the vines

Thanks to requests for contraband seeds from out of state, my many morning glories are about to take off climbing. Right now, the skies the limit. But I've been concerned that 1) there isn't enough room on the few sticks that comprise the "arbor" on my staircase landing and 2) they are too short. Some time ago, I made mental plans for a taller "arbor" with members extending much higher. After all, the longer and higher the vines climb, the longer they blossom.

Fortunately, I currently have a household labor force visiting: the grandchildren from Louisiana. Grandson was armed with the handy bow saw and and sent with his sister up the hill into the big mountain mahogany patch where the tall, reasonably straight stems grow.

Once the requested 8-9 poles were cut, the team gathered them up, proceeded down the hill and through the house to carry them down stairs. Yes, they could have climbed all the way down outside the house; they just didn't think of it... Kids, you know.

Next step, trimming all those little side branches, twigs and leaves, finally mounting the poles along side the previous sticks to offer more places for the flowers to clamber. (To answer the question about the hairdo, the cutting and trimming happened yesterday. Today, the arbor was finished just before Omegamom and the other granddaughter arrived from Alaska. Full house.)

A high cross piece holds the poles in a more orderly pattern. We could have used yet another cross piece about two-three feet higher, but that was a bit too much of a project for the current work team. Aren't grandkids wonderful (even if they drag a sheaf of mountain mahogany cutoffs through the living room to get downstairs)?

Behold: before (above) and after (below).

Aglow in the September Sun

About noon. I stepped out the front door and happened to glance up. The mountain mahogany seeds were glowing in the autumn sun. Oh, I couldn't resist taking picture after picture. Here are a few. Enjoy!

A Different Kind of Mahogany

Not the well known furniture wood from the tropics, our mountain mahogany is a sprawling shrub that's a member of the rose clan. The plant above is one of many in the thicket on my hillside.

Researching the subject with The Google was less than very productive, unfortunately. Why the name, for example? I caught one brief sentence indicating that at least one species has red, mahogany-colored trunks. Not here in Arizona, as you can see above. Another article talked about the dense wood as being mahogany-colored. Afternote: I finally got into the brief Britannica article on MM, which noted that it is said that the common name was given to species of these plants by the Mormons, who used the wood to build the Tabernacle Organ at Salt Lake City, Utah.

The local MM grows many canes, often as tall as 15 feet. Most are unbranched, and seldom as much as 2-3 inches in diameter at the base. On the other hand, other varieties of MM do form small trees, especially at higher elevations and to the north of Arizona, which explains those organ pipes above. The plants all tend to be evergreen, with small leathery, gray-green leaves.

I found the canes useful for making this morning glory trellis. And I would bet on them for fishing poles, as well. Native Americans used the wood to make spindles for starting fires, for bows and arrows, prayer sticks and weaving implements. The roots provided a red dye for buckskin and wool. The plants also provide a good browse for deer and other animals.

Mountain mahogany flowers are small, shy and retiring...

...but the seeds are spectacular, especially when backlit. They are designed to fly on the winds, catch in animal fur and to corkscrew into the ground to get established. One reference cited the "difficulty" of sprouting the seeds; my experience is quite the opposite -- if I didn't pull the seedlings up promptly, mountain mahogany would take over! I like the plant, but not that much.

The Lesser Evergreens

The heading is by way of saying that not all mountain evergreens are conifers and their relatives, such as our majestic ponderosas above or the alligator junipers below.

Admittedly, most of our other evergreens are shrubs, sometimes verging on treelike growth. However, the emory oak is a very serious tree, as the the picture above attests. A surprise: the acorns of local emory oaks contain very little tannin and can be eaten without the retting treatment required to make most acorns palatable. My husband and I called them "gourmet acorns" when we first discovered this useful fact.

The leaves of the emory are wavy in outline -- but they do not bite like the turbinella or scrub oak that is so common in the uplands. Take a look at the leaves below. Each of those points is exactly that -- a tiny dagger. And when the leaves from the scrub oak finally rot and turn to mulch, the last item to go is, you guessed it, that little point. Reason enough to always wear gloves when gardening. The turbinella grows to about 15 feet in height and forms thickets. (FYI: the rounded, more yellow-green leaves are mistletoe; the shaggy orangey growth is the result of a gall insect.)

In yesterday's post, you were introduced to one of our more spectacular shrubs, the manzanita. The leathery leaves are green year round, the branches are a striking mahogany red, and the clusters of little pink, bell-like flowers clearly identify this plant as a member of the heather family, along with the arbutus tree. The growth habit of the manzanita is to spread via underground stolens; given an open area for spreading, a manzanita will create a large fairy ring 20 feet or so in diameter as the original portion in the center dies off. And, yes, those "little apples", the fruit, make a fine jam or jelly.

As for the mountain mahogany (above), I've got no idea how it won its name. Probably because the wood is both very tough and heavy. The example below is one of the well watered specimens from the thicket uphill from the house. The limbs seldom grow larger than 2 to 3 inches in diameter, but may range up to 12 or 15 feet tall.

Those limbs or branches are reasonably straight and make a good trellis for morning glories and other climbing plants.

In conclusion, lest we forget, cacti might be considered shrubs -- and they certainly remain green-ish year round. A gentle reminder for friends from Oz -- these prickly pears are growing in their home turf and do not present any ecological problem. My favorite amazing prickly pear fact: the plant is native in all but one or two of the states.