Desert Beauty

The desert in Arizona, rather than being the barren waste often expected, is a veritable panorama of plants and colors. That beauty which makes the desert appealing, is a strange combination of conservation and display. Every element that goes into its makeup is a slow process of gathering, shielding, and saving, through good times and poor, for an elaborate bountiful, colorful show in the splendor and glory of the rainbow.The fall rains of September and November quench the thirst of perennial plants and allow them to start storing moisture. Occasional rains later through the winter furnish the surplus which the Giant Saguaro absorbs to stretch its accordion pleated body, as others of the cactus family become lush and green. The desert trees also gather the precious water through their long roots. These plants of the desert are equipped with oily, parchment-like skins so not a molecule is dissipated, while a covering of thorns and spines protect them from being eaten by animals seeking their moisture.

This gathering and husbanding goes on and on to one end, that the blossoms shall be colorful and beautiful to attract the bees and other insects necessary to spread the pollen to others of their kind that they multiply.

This display is so arranged that each group of plants at the appointed time comes forth in great profusion and runs its complete cycle giving way to another and another cycle, each with its special beauty. These cycles, overlapping, give a desert flower garden for several months during late winter and spring.

By the end of January the Chuparosa, which has grown unnoticed under a Palo Verde or other desert tree, becomes a mass of vermilion blooms. These vermilion clumps become the winter feeding grounds of the brilliant green Costa's Hummingbird which woos his lady love with a display of irridescent amethyst as it flashes its gorget in the sunlight.

The moist spots in the shadows of trees or rocks now become green and fairly sparkle with cool freshness. The flowers of these early plants are so small they may be passed unnoticed unless you look closely. When there has been extra rain in December the whole floor of the desert becomes carpeted with green, dotted with miniature flowers of white, yellow and purple. The great expanse of various greens of the different spring plants are in themselves a study in color.

Generously distributed among the brown rocks on the warm hillsides, the Incienso which has been waiting in gray-green dress, now becomes enormous bouquets of yellow, telling to all who see that spring is here.

The hard, little seeds of the annuals, which have lain dormant a year or more waiting for sufficient moisture to bring them to life, add their pastel daintiness in masses, splotches, and sprink-lings of color. The delicate, dew-ladened petals of the Desert Evening Primrose open wide to greet the dawn, amid the lacy, green leaves and purple blossoms of the Alfilaria.

life, add their pastel daintiness in masses, splotches, and sprink-lings of color. The delicate, dew-ladened petals of the Desert Evening Primrose open wide to greet the dawn, amid the lacy, green leaves and purple blossoms of the Alfilaria.

Yellow Poppies fill the small canyons at the foot of the mountains like lakes of gold and seem to flow out across the desert. Scattered through the undulating fields of purple Fiddle-neck are patches of pink Owl Clover, yellow and pink Wallflower and purple Lupine, making a striking and harmonious picture. Stretches of brick-red Desert Mallow knee deep, sprinkle you with their golden pollen as you wade through.

The waves of color appearing in March and April include the Cactuses. The Chollas (choy-yuh) which seem to make up the greater number are in great variety of yellows, golds and copper in all combinations, ranging to purple, and in the higher altitudes, a deep red. Miles and miles of color spread across canyon and wash and hill, broken by patches of Prickly Pear which burst buds from the edge of their flat tunas. They seem to prefer the yellows and golds, though the Beaver Tail which grows west of Congress Junction is pink. A profusion of Magenta blossoms, each with a yellow center, breaks forth from the low, many headed Hedgehog Cactus. The Barrel Cactus with a coronet of yellow flowers which are as much as two inches across, forming a circle of small suns about its head, leans worshipfully to the sun. If the spring bloom is missed, the Barrel blooms in late August with a red-orange flower. The bundles of hooked spines of this species are dark red forming rows of glowing red spots on the green body. The Cholla Blanca Cactus, so covered with long white thorns that they ap-pear as ghosts standing in the bright moonlight, put out a greenish white flower with an unpretentious, delicate beauty. The ever waving spikes of the Ocotillo on whip-like stems reach-ing five to fifteen feet toward the blue sky, are clusters of bright crimson flowers, a sure attraction to the Hummingbirds and the Scott Oriole, that handsome fellow of black and yellow.

Finally as a grand climax the Palo Verde and Ironwood trees become gems of yellow and lavender, winding in colorful serpentines on and on along the washes, while the Mesquite trees stand in clumps and thickets adorned with yellow tassels made up of many minute flowers. The Saguaros, mighty monarchs of the desert put on their crowns of waxy, white flowers which reflect the sun in glistening auroras. Toward the foothills the Yuccas (the Candle of the Lord) in that su-preme effort put forth a stem from the heart of the plant which reaches skyward and opens hundreds of white pendent flowers. The Joshua tree, a tree Yucca, pushes out from the ends of its branches, flower stalks, great white spike-like bouquets which when examined reveal that they are lilies.

This procession of clean bright colors predominately yellow and white dwindles by July and the plants carry on to maturity the thousands of seeds which will be needed to continue the desert flowers. Again they settle down to that slow process of gathering, shielding and saving for another time when they can produce that kaleidoscopic color pageant, the desert.

Arizona Salad Bowl By Ernest Douglas

A dilapidated, badly overloaded jaloppy with out-of-state license plates rolled off the pavement along a Valley of the Sun highway and slid to a stop with a wild screech of brakes. Out of it oozed the kind of a pilgrim that just naturally would be traveling in that sort of chariot. After him oozed his wife. Both stepped over to the fence and laid gnarled hands on the barbed wire. Their eyes were fixed on rows and rows of bright green, stretching away to a line of trees in the distance. "Gollee, Mandy!" exclaimed the pilgrim, "what a patch o' garden truck!"

Those travelers had chanced upon a field where modern “iceberg” head lettuce was being grown on a modern scale in the county that stands second among all counties of the United States in lettuce production. Within a few miles of where they stood there was probably 12,000 to 15,000 acres of growing lettuce. Put all that together and it would indeed make quite a “patch.” But this wasn't all that would have astonished the flivver tourists if they could have known the full story of how Arizona lettuce is grown, harvested, packed and shipped all over the United States and Canada. For instance, if someone had happened along to tell them that if the nights didn't get chilly in Arizona and California, easterners could not have their favorite salad vegetables in cold weather, they would have snorted that such talk didn't make sense.

Just a lot of other things about lettuce don't make sense to the uninitiated. It is a crop of parodoxes and superlatives. Growers do everything they can think of to keep it from being having as a normal plant should. Its production and handling are more highly industralized than those of any other farm product. It is shipped farther and distributed over a wider area than any other perishable product.

To those strangers in Arizona, as well as to our own fathers and grandfathers, lettuce was just “garden sass” that they planted in the spring along with radishes, onions and mustard. Crisp leaves were gathered for the table until warm weather made them tough and bitter. Then, unless the plants were hoed out, they shot up seed stalks that were knee-high or better. They fulfilled their natural mission, which was to make seed to reproduce themselves.

But it was noted that if lettuce of certain varieties came up in the late fall, when cool weather arrived the leaves would fold in on themselves for protection, and make a head. No seed stalk could be formed and the plant was defeated, a failure with no hope of posterity. But to the human palate the partly blanched leaves inside a head are tastier than the green ones which grow out in the sun. Obviously, heads are much easier to gather and pack than leaf lettuce. They occupy much less space and wilt much less rapidly.

Let us see how this freak of nature gave rise to a vast industry.

Varieties and strains were developed in which the tendency to form heads at the first touch of chill was intensified. This was the first of a long list of major lettuce triumphs achieved by plant breeders.

The process of improving lettuce is peculiarly complicated. With most plants the breeders work toward definite ends by crossing or by selecting desirable individuals and saving seed from them. But the desirable lettuce plant is one that never produces seed. So it is a matter of growing seed in the normal way, then planting it at the proper season and under proper conditions to produce head lettuce, and observing results.

Seed production is a business entirely different from growing lettuce for the market, for the most part not even carried on in the same localities. Most of the testing of varieties is done in California by United States Bureau of Plant Industry experts, who have originated so many crosses that they are known only by numbers running up into the thousands. One of these workers, the late Dr. Ivor C. Jagger, saved the industry more