Photo Essay
Mesquite
Mesquite is almost everywhere in West Texas. Read this essay for background information about its presence in prehistorical and historical times, and about how it later spread after the buffalo and prairie dogs were mostly eliminated, and after fire became an enemy instead of a tool for humans.
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At first glance, a mesquite pasture seems "all the same." Throughout the year, however, the pasture takes on different aspects with the changes in weather. In early March a foggy morning darkens the bark of the shrubs.
In late March Bladderpod is often found carpeting the ground under the mesquite.
In the heat of summer, a pasture is green and still during the afternoon.
In late summer the green softens, and individual leaves seem to have a gray cast upon close inspection.
During a early winter snowstorm, the ground is too warm for the snow to stick (at first), but as the soil is wetted, the snow accumulates.
After a winter ice storm, the mesquite branches appear to be almost like fog - glimmering and softening the texture of the scene.
Mesquite usually leafs out about April 1st. The pinnate leaves slowly unfurl.
Along with the leaves are the bloom buds, but they won't bloom until the leaves are fully open.
Every few years a late frost or snowstorm will "nip" the leaves and another set will have to unfurl.
The blooms are visited by many species of bees, butterflies, flies, and even moths. On the prickly pear, notice the true "leaves," the green fleshy "commas" visible on the pad to the right.
Christmas Cholla often still has a few red berries on its branches, and adds color to the spring scene.
The white anthers have not been pollinated, but the yellow ones with the brown tips have. The bloom only lasts a few days.
The beans are flat first, before they swell with seeds.
During rainy years, the green beans seem especially turgid - as if busting with moisture.
Some beans become twisted after suffering from leafhopper and other sucking insects that can stand the bitter taste of the juicy green beans.
Some beans are very twisted!
Sometimes the insect attack is so severe that the bean does not develop beyond a "ring" shape. Notice the leafhoppers inside of the loop, and the crematogaster ant headed for the bean. Crematogaster ants prefer "honeydew" (anal exudations from leafhoppers and aphids.) They "herd" the aphids, moving them about, but even more amazingly, it is thought that they also herd the caterpillars of the Mesquite (Reakirt's) butterflies and give the caterpillars a winter home in their nest.
A yucca moth came to feed on the exudations of the mesquite bean - the turgid beans sometimes ooze "sap."
Not far from the yucca moth, a bean with sap oozing was found.
These strange bumps may be a bacterial gall ("cancer") or they may be the reaction to egg laying by seed beetles - we are not sure!
After a few weeks growing, the bean begins to turn red.
The red beans are sweet - children that have chewed on them at the Sibley Center usually say they taste like apple juice. Indians ground the beans in this stage to make flour - and some groups relied heavily on bean crops. (In Arizona, one riparian grove was reportedly purposely pruned to make the harvest easier - and that may have been a common practice.)
The bean crop can be so heavy that the branches of the mesquite are pulled almost to the ground.
After turning yellow, the beans fall to the ground, and if any rain occurs, the beans become coated with mud by termites.
Aphanogaster ants love mesquite beans and will carry them for 20 yards back to the nest.
In the nest the bean will have the embryo cut out.
Outside of the ant's nest, there will be a large mesquite seed midden.
Harvester ants (Pogomyrmex) also love mesquite beans and will strip the flesh off of the seeds in a few hours after it falls to the ground, leaving only a little bit of tough skin behind.
After the bean lies on the ground for a while, sometimes a rainy spell will cause "bird poop fungus" to "flower" and send up this bizarre fruiting body.
Some beans slowly get covered with soil. Near this one, an ant is tugging a rainbug along - but later dropped it, deciding it was not edible. See this photoessay for more about rainbugs.
A mesquite seed germinated after being washed into a detritus pile after a heavy rainstorm.
Mesquites will put out new growth anytime rain falls during the growing season. The new growth's thorns are green.
Underneath a thorny large mesquite, plants have protection from grazers, so they are able to produce seeds more readily. Some ranchers say that these areas under mesquite are important during droughts, for if everything is grazed beyond the mesquites, some seed will still be present from the previous year. Cory ephedra (the carpet of green sticks) is an endemic to West Texas. The desert holly (the spiky round leaves) is usually found under mesquite. It is a perennial with a rhizomatous root system and often dozens of individual sprouts are found under mesquites.
In tighter soils with a clay content, the perennial Verbesina nana often carpets the ground after good rains - the rest of the time the rhizomatous roots lay dormant, waiting.
On the left are large rescue grass clumps gone to seed. This is an introduced grass, brought to provide winter grazing for livestock. It is common in towns of the region, where it is usually called "wildrye."
In sandier soils, especially along fence rows near farmland where blowsand piles up, the annual white spectacle pod and the annual blue flowered climbing snapdragon germinate with winter moisture and early spring rains.
In loamier soil Germander, another rhizomatous perennial, will be common in late April and early May.
Birds often perch on mesquite branches and defecate, leaving behind the seeds of other shrubs. Wolfberry has bright red berries and insects go berserk over the small tubular white flowers. It too is rhizomatous, sending suckers under the soil, eventually forming thickets.
Bush muhly grass is almost always found under mesquite, and usually in tighter clay soils. It is the nesting place for Cassin's sparrows, an icon of the habitat. See this essay about Cassin's Sparrows.
Saltbush has been increasing in west Texas in the last two decades. Cattle will graze it during dry times. With wolfberry, tasajillo (Christmas Cholla), and prickly pear, pastures can become dense thickets.
Cowpen daisy is common in mesquite pasture. Its leaves are 'rank' (bad smelling). It is also a Verbesina, but an annual.
Bigpad prickly pear came to Midland County during the cattledrives in the 1930s. In the 1930s it was carried on trucks and fed to cattle at the night's bedding ground. Later, birds and animals spread it even further, and some pastures now are solid prickly pear.
Gray leaved Croton is another rhizomatous perennial common in loamy soils on the southern Llano Estacado. Two perennial species and one annual species are found. It is also known as doveweed, for its seeds are often the most common thing found in a dove's crop by dovehunters.
In the foreground is Ephedra (popotillo) with a spider's web. Beyond, the grasses are mostly tobosa grass, an indicator plant of soils with a clay content.
In draws basket flower often fills every available space after a rainy winter and spring. In such a thicket, chiggers have been found in the wettest of years. Chiggers leave hundreds of red spots on a person's flesh and itch, but otherwise are just a nuisance.
The white sleepy daisy and the yellow spiny aster are also commonly found with mesquite. Both wildflowers are long-blooming perennials.
Babywhite aster (only 2-3 inches tall) often forms mats under mesquites and usually bloom in April into May although rainy seasons later will stimulate more flowering. It too is a rhizomatous perennial.
Tasajillo (Christmas cholla) proliferates in droughts when the ground is bare. When several rainy years in a row occur, red spidermites coat the plant with a fine webbing and they die.
Mesquites capture seedstalks of plants in the wind. Fall witchgrass has panicles that float on the wind like parachutes and sometimes form drifts three feet tall (until rain or animals flattens the drift to the ground.)
Birds love the red berries of tasajillo and spread the seeds far and wide, usually under another mesquite. The blue thorns of lotebush, another shrub with berries that bird love, are also visible in the photograph.
Yucca is often the only green in a winter mesquite pasture, especially after a long drought.
As summer wears on, mesquite leaflets fall to the ground. The black spots are dried up Nostoc, a green algae that appears after rain. The shape of a mesquite bean is hidden by mud left by termites.
A number of species of lichen can be found on mesquite trunks. The yellow is the most common, the gray second most common. Notice the spider dragline on the left side of the trunk.
An olive green lichen is visible with the others in this photo.
Moss is found on mesquite trunks during rainy spells. Also visible is more wolfberry, and the big leaves of buffalo gourd.
Moss and lichen adorn mesquite together, during rainy spells, while the grass and forbs grow rapidly.
Bristlegrass is the favorite food of the wintering sparrows on the Llano Estacado, and is often "deposited" under a mesquite, where it germinates.
In dry years only yucca, tasajillo, broomweed (in the right foreground), and the gray Tiquilia are just about the only plants growing in the mesquite pasture.
Viewed in closeup, the leaves of yucca and mesquite form an interesting study of lines.
Prairie zinnia, another rhizomatous perennial, is also a common wildflower in the mesquite pasture. It blooms in the spring in late April and May, and then anytime a good heavy rain comes along. It is used in xeriscape gardens as a low ground cover.
On the first sunny day after several days of rain, termite castings can be found as high as 4 feet on a dead mesquite limb within a living mesquite.
Twig girdling beetles sometimes appear in incredible numbers, pruning every mesquite in the pasture. Other years, not a beetle can be found, nor its unique evidence of its work.
Cotton rats live in mesquite pastures with plenty of vegetation. Some manage to survive even in dry times -notice the mesquite bean at the entrance to its hole.
Packrats are common in mesquite thickets, building huge mounds of sticks. Use the website search engine for more information about packrats.
Packrats often chew on mesquite bark during the winter when they have run out of stored food. A diet of mesquite bark will eventually kill the packrat.
After severe packrat damage, a mesquite attempted to leave out, but the growth never unfurled and finally died.
Many species of robberfly use mesquites to perch on, while waiting for passing flying insects. This one, a mimic of a bumblebee, specializes in catching bumblebees. (For photographs of other species of robberflies visit the photoessay on the Insect Survey done by St. John's Episcopal Elementary (Odessa)).
Ladderbacked woodpeckers live year around in mesquite pastures providing they can find a fence post, telephone pole, or even a mesquite big enough in which to carve a nest hole.
Scaled quail are common year around in mesquite pastures that have some bare soil. Further east, bobwhite quail are more common. In Midland County, in wet years, bobwhite numbers increase, and scaled quail decrease.
Roadrunners are common year around in mesquite pastures, too, feasting on lizards, snakes, small birds, and many other items.
Mockingbirds are also common year around in mesquite pastures - especially if there is plenty of tasajillo, lotebush, and wolfberry shrubs in the thicket, too.
Cottontail spend hot afternoons in shallow pits they dig under the shade of a mesquite.
Jackrabbits are also common in mesquite pastures.
Even though a ranch pond may be miles away, dragonflies are often found hunting in mesquite pastures.
Even the small damselflies can be found in mesquite pastures, too.
Catching the insects of mesquite is a popular activity of visiting students to the Sibley Nature Center. (Again, check out the photoessay on St John's elementary, and this photoessay.)
House finches are also common in mesquite pastures.
In the winter, many mesquite pastures are full of small flocks of white-crowned sparrows. A dedicated birdwatcher will track the flocks and find other species of wintering sparrows - sometimes up to 7 or 8 species in one flock.
The pattern of mesquite leaves against a glorious sunrise is incredibly beautiful.
In the fall, the yellow blossoms of broomweed form a backdrop for the patterns of mesquite branches and yucca seedstalks. Notice that the mesquite is blooming again, an unusual occurrence that happened because heavy rains had kept the beans from forming earlier.
In the fall, the leaflets sometimes disappear - but we have never found a bug doing the damage. Only one out of a hundred mesquites will appear this way, but it often happens.
When the leaves hang on, they actually do turn golden - a faint fall color to enjoy.
When almost all the leaves are gone, an old white yucca stalk stands out.
Tumbleweed sometimes will germinate on bare ground and fill all the spaces between the mesquites.
In the ground fog of a fall morning, a tall kochia (an annual weed) looms over the branches of the mesquite.
After leaf fall, a tumbleweed clutters up the foreground. Grasses fill open spots, and the red berries of tasajillo are visible in the distance.
Dense fog makes a mesquite pasture mysterious in the late fall.
The dense fog condenses on the mesquite branches and slowly drips to the ground - further increasing the growth of all of the understory plants mentioned above.
White thorns on winter mesquite mark the new growth of the year. They darken with age.
Sometimes winter's first precipitation comes before leaf fall - and little ice pellets delicately balance on the leaves.
Thorns still green from new growth are coated with ice in this photo.
A heavy icestorm will coat every branch of mesquite with ice.
After a heavy snow in November, a green leaf is still visible.
Heavy snow makes a mesquite pasture seem much thicker, somehow.
Cottontails struggle to survive in the winter, and a long cold spell sometimes spells their doom.
A house finch hid low in the mesquite during a snowstorm. Read this essay about birds in the snow.
In late winter, broomweed begins to green up.
After winter moisture, the winter rosettes of annual wildflowers will speckle the bare ground in the pasture.
When a pasture is cleared, the big piles of brush are all that is left of the wonders seen above. We love mesquite!