Saltbush Succession

Weather: Rain Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday.  Russian thistles are getting larger, and new goat’s heads sprout everyday.  Most cultivated plants are taking it in, but not blooming.

On Thursday, I noticed a crop of what I call moss on the rail timbers that support my fence with my east neighbor.  I don’t know enough about these early life forms to use anything more than a generic label.  In addition to the usual shades of gray and green, there were white and yellow patches.

Last useful rain: 8/20.  Week’s low: 55 degrees F.  Week’s high: 91 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 30 mph in Santa Fé on Wednesday.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, buddleia, caryopteris, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, morning glories, Russian sage, purple salvia, sweet peas, David and purple garden phlox, bouncing Bess, rose of Sharon, pink evening primroses, cucumber, cultivated and farmer’s sunflowers, cushion chrysanthemum, lance leaf coreopsis, Sensation cosmos, Shasta daisies, zinnias, yellow yarrow, pampas grass

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, datura, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, silver lead nightshade, alfalfa, leather leaf globe mallow, nits-and-lice, Queen Anne’s lace, stick leaf, alfilerillo, velvetweed, toothed spurge, prostrate knotweed, goat’s heads, green amaranth, pigweed, Russian thistles, lamb’s quarter, chamisa, snakeweed broom, native sunflowers, ánil del muerto, tahoka daisies, goldenrod, wild lettuce, horseweed, strap leaf and golden hairy asters, ragweed, native and common dandelions; ring muhly, six-week and black grama, brome, timothy, barnyard, quack and three-awn grasses

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature and floribunda roses, cliff rose, garlic chives, hostas, Johnson blue geranium, Dutch clover, large flower soapwort, lead plant, lady bells, sidalcea, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, golden spur columbine, perennial four o’clocks, blue flax, sea lavender, Siberian catmint, tomatillo, chocolate flowers, anthemis, Mary Stoker chrysanthemum, Mönch asters, black-eyed Susans, gloriosa daisies, Mexican hats, blanket flowers, plains coreopsis, white yarrow

What bedding plants are blooming: Snapdragons

What’s blooming from this year’s seed: Sweet alyssum, pink bachelor buttons, cantaloupe, watermelons

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbird, western chickadees, geckoes, lady bugs, pale monarch butterfly, cabbage butterflies in village, small and bumble bees, hornets, grasshoppers, mosquitoes, house flies, harvester and sidewalk ants; hear crickets

Tasks: I alternate between routine tasks and fighting the Russian thistle invasion.  This week, the routine became a project.  I normally weed the sloped bed in front of the house this time of year, when the golden spur columbine seedlings begin emerging.  Over time, some roots from larger columbines and a long-gone tree worked their way under the bricks that terrace the bed.  This year they went from being tilted to precarious.  Since I’m too old to fall, I’ve had to pry out the bricks, remove roots, then level the ground, and reset them.  Needless to say, I don’t get very far on any one day.

Weekly update: Drought is insidious.  It doesn’t destroy in one fell swoop.  Instead, it makes small alterations year by year until, suddenly, it seems everything has changed.

When I first moved here, the south end of my lot was covered with needle grass, and the north with winterfat; the one was prairie vegetation, the other steppe.

Then, when the sewage system was installed, a four-winged salt bush appeared.  They need more moisture than winterfat, and were limited to places like the septic tank that trapped moisture.

Salt bushes have male and female plants, but there were enough in the area so my mine multiplied.  By 2014, they had taken over the area south of the house where they got some water that seeped away from some shrubs that I watered.  Winterfat had taken over the grassland to the west where it got less water.

I didn’t notice any changes because I rarely walked to the far side of the bushes.  Then, we had that wind this April, and went out to pick up Russian thistle carcasses.  I discovered the winterfat had died, and the salt bushes had expanded.  No native grasses were left.  June grass had taken over where it got water that drained away from the house.

At first I though the salt bushes had somehow killed the winterfat.  I wondered if they were poisoning the soil, but remembered they only exude salt if soils are saline.  Then I thought maybe they diverted water that used to go downhill to the winterfats.

Then I realized that the winterfats simply had died from the heat and lack of water.  The large ones on the north end of the property also died, and the ones that had drifted south were either dying or small.  That is, until they revived with this summer’s rains.

The two plants simply had different responses to the continuing drought and high heat last year and this.  They’re both members of the Chenopodium family, but salt bushes could adapt and winterfat could not.

Notes on photographs:
1.  “Mosses” growing on a rail timber, 18 August 2022.

2.  Four-winged saltbush (Atriplex canescens) that planted itself in native vegetation, 16 March 1995; building in background has been obscured.

3.  Four-winged saltbush with gray winterfat (Eurotia lanata) in front, 3 May 2014.

4.  Four-winged saltbush with dead winterfat bushes; June grass (Koeleria cristata) in foreground, 20 August 2022.

End notes: I discussed saltbushes on my Nature Abhors a Garden website on 11 February 2007 and 11 December 2011.