Saltbush Strategies

Weather: Moisture crossing northern Baja has been streaming over the area, but not falling.  The clouds have kept afternoon temperatures down, and when they did manage to rise, winds began.  However, the clouds have whetted the appetite of the dry air, so less moisture has been pulled from the soil.

High winds on Tuesday were blowing Russian thistle carcasses across the road.  They broke loose more pigweed plants.

Last useful snow: 11/13.  Week’s low: 10 degrees F.  Week’s high: 57 degrees F in the shade.  Winds were up to 52 mph in Santa Fé on Tuesday.

What’s still green: Needles on pines, piñon. cultivated and native junipers, yews, arborvitae; leaves on cliff roses, Japanese honeysuckle, yuccas, vinca, bindweed, hollyhocks, alfilerillo, sweet violets, bouncing Bess, pink evening primroses, coral bells, Queen Anne’s lace, blue flax, lance-leaf coreopsis, anthemis, purple asters; blades on June and cheat grass; bases of needle grass

What’s still gray or gray-green: Leaves on four-winged saltbushes, winterfat, snow-in-summer, winterfat

What’s turning purple or red: Leaves on coral beard tongues; stems on apricots, fruiting crab apple

What’s turned yellow: Branches on weeping willlows.

Animal sightings: Birds keep flitting by my windows that I don’t recognize.  A spotted dark gray woodpecker landed on the globe willow on Thursday, but left without eating.

Tasks: I ordered the materials I need for the fences, and now am waiting for a delivery.  In the meantime, I continue opening the culvert on my neighbor’s side of the fence, and moving the dirt to the low area that flooded me last summer.

Weekly update: I made a one-sided truce with the salt bushes.  I accept that they’ve taken over parts of the yard, but I refuse to let them spread from those areaa.  They, of course, don’t agree.

I learned with Siberian elms it is useless to cut down suckers.  More stems sprout from the roots, creating a copse where once there was a single tree.  Now I bend the trunks over some gravel and spray the leaves with poison.  When the roots die, I cut them down.

I tried that with salt bushes, but it didn’t work as well.  The leaves are thinner and more vertical, so they provide smaller areas to catch poison.  Then, they are covered with tiny hairs that shed the poisons.

This past week I started cutting down the ones I didn’t want.  Even though many had been sprayed, the interiors of the stems were green.  Apparently the wood is softer than the elms, and so its splits.  More interesting, it sometimes pulls out the roots when I use the loppers on them.

What surprised me was that the ones near the copse were spreading by their roots.  I always assumed the seeds were important because that’s the only way they could sprout at the distances they do.  However, New Mexico is the one place where a rhizomatous form has evolved.

I cut the ends of the branches first and put them in the wheelbarrow, then went back for the lower stems and, if I twisted the loppers, roots.  Unfortunately, when I cut the tops the already loosened seeds fell to the ground.

I wondered for the first time exactly how those seeds germinate.  The dried wings that surround the seed would keep them from the soil.

The seed itself is embedded in the center column.  The photograph of the swollen area is fuzzy, but it’s a very small area.

I tried to get to the seed itself, and found it difficult.  Marvin Foiles said those who want to sow the seeds use a hammer mill to release the seed.  I could tear the papery wings away, but I could not get to the seed, even when I tried using a nail file to saw away at it.

In nature, the seeds only can germinate with they are leached, scraped, or go through cycles of heat and cold.  I supposed mine simply get so wet the wings collapse so they drop onto the ground.  Perhaps their own chemicals then can eat away at the hard, protective shell.  Something works, because they keep coming up many feet from their mothers.

Notes on photographs: Four-winged saltbushes (Atriplex canescens) taken November 27, 2022, and December 4, 2022.

End notes:  
Janet L. Howard.  “Atriplex Canescens.”  U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Fire Effects Information System database, 2003.

Marvin W. Foiles.  “Atriplex L.  Saltbush.  240-243 in C. S. Schopmeyer.  Seeds of Woody Plants in the United States.  Washington, DC: U. S. Department of Agricutlure, Forest Service, 1974.