Mesquite: The Southwest's Tree of Life

MESQUITE

What has enormous appeal among such diverse individuals as professional chefs, backyard barbecue cooks, Native American medicine men, landscape architects, woodworkers, and a few select cattlemen?

The answer is mesquite, a tree that grows in much of the Southwest and is abundant in southern Arizona.

That delicious smoked steak you dined on last night in Seattle, Anchorage, New York, London, or Paris, for instance, may well have owed its distinctive flavor to this popular plant. Once only a regional treat, nowadays thanks to worldwide travel trends and migration to Arizonathe flavor and fragrance of mesquite (pronounced meh-skeet) are relished far and wide.

Innovators like John Koehler encouraged the spread of this message. Koehler operates Desert Mesquite of Arizona, Inc., which processes mesquite into chips and a liquid smoke product for barbecue cookery.

Inspired by the aroma produced by a steak cooking over a mesquite fire, Koehler, a mechanical engineer, designed a machine that would tear firewood-size chunks of mesquite into chips that could be used to create smoke for barbecues. That was in 1980.

The rest is the history of some highly successful marketing efforts. Other companies in the Southwest provide mesquite in fistsize chunks and as charcoal. The Koehler machines break and grade the chips into three sizes. Then the chips are baked in an oven. This not only dries them thoroughly but ensures they won't contain insect larvae or develop mold when sealed in a plastic package. The customer gets pure mesquite, nothing else.

The largest sizes go to restaurants; smaller material is packaged for the retail trade; and the sawdust from processing the other sizes is shipped out of state to a company that burns it and condenses the smoke into a liquid flavoring. Distributors export the chips and liquid smoke to all 50 states and Guam and are investigating the market in Japan. Restaurants in several other foreign countries already are using mesquite.

Botanically, mesquite is a legume, a plant that puts nitrogen back into the soil. The name mesquite comes from the South American Indian word mesquitl.

For centuries, desert-dwelling Indians and Mexicans have called mesquite the "tree of life." They treasured it for the food value of its beans, which were ground into pinole meal to make bread or fermented into a liquor. The bean pulp contains about 30 percent sugar.

The roots have medicinal properties. Root bark was used to treat wounds, and other root compounds were used to cure diarrhea. Root boiled in water was recommended for nervousness and colic. Yaqui Indians used a pulp of leaves in a poultice that was wrapped around the head to treat headaches. A fluid squeezed out of the leaves, called alcohol, served as an eye lotion. The inner bark was saved to make baskets and coarse fabrics. Some Indians processed this inner bark to make it soft enough to serve as baby diapers.

Although soil conservationists condemn mesquite as a glutton of precious groundwater, cattlemen are likely to laud it because the beans provide food for their animals, and the tree shelters livestock from the hot sun in summer.

Firewood suppliers also promote mesquite as fuel for fireplaces. In fact it is both highly prized and highly priced because it burns hot and long and is appreciated for its fragrance.

The late J. Frank Dobie, a renowned writer on Western subjects, was a mesquite aficionado. He once told of a rancher who held his hands in mesquite smoke after breakfast each morning so he could enjoy the "perfume" all day.

Although large stands of Arizona's mesquite trees have been bulldozed in soil conservation projects, it is still a protected tree. Cutting is by permit only. But Gene Wright, a research associate with the Office of Arid Land Studies at the University of Arizona, sees no danger of extinction.

"They have taken out all of the big trees on most public lands," he said, "[but] I don't think we are losing these mesquite thickets. Mesquites grow back from cutoff roots, so I just don't see it completely eradicated." Wright added that several large conservancies have been set up in Arizona along the San Pedro River near Mammoth, Benson, and St. David.

Although there are 48 species of mesquite, the most common in Arizona is Prosopis juliflora, which grows to 30 feet tall, with trunks up to four feet in diameter. An evergreen, it blooms in tiny saffroncolored catkins. The flowers are present in spring, fall, and summer and attract bees, which make a honey from the pollen that is an epicure's delight.

While mesquite may be removed in many range areas, it is favored for its adaptability by landscape architects who have been importing South American varieties from Chile and Argentina. A tree for all seasons, mesquite's value to humankind extends even beyond fuel, food, animal feed, and its value as an element of beauty in the landscape. It also plays a pivotal role in the folklore of the Southwest.

Pioneers used to say the presence of mesquite indicated water was nearby. Oldtimers also said that when mesquite bloomed in the spring it was time to plant tomatoes and cotton. A growth of mesquite also was considered a sign of fertile soil to the pioneers of the Southwest.

"Pick the land where the wild peach grows" is an old Texas folk saying. Mesquite was likened to the peach tree because of its limb configuration.

For centuries, Indians of the Southwest have used mesquite limbs and logs as structural members in building. Spanish settlers put the wood to more sophisti cated uses, as in ceiling beams and pillars for porch roofs.

But because of the generally crooked pattern of mesquite trees, it is difficult to find a straight log of any considerable length. In Tucson, cabinet and furniture makers pay a premium for a mesquite board more than seven feet long.

find a straight log of any considerable length. In Tucson, cabinet and furniture makers pay a premium for a mesquite board more than seven feet long.

One of these woodworkers is Stephen Paul, proprietor of Arroyo Design, who uses mesquite in the creation of furniture ranging from contemporary design to period pieces.

Paul, a former teacher, returned to college to study architecture and became involved in restoration projects in Tucson barrios. There he discovered that older adobe houses didn't have closets, so he started making armoires to provide stor-age space. Paul then made another dis-covery: he likes to build furniture.

MESQUITE

Renting shop space from a friend, Tom Deeds, who made furniture out of mes-quite, Paul began building custom pieces himself. He, too, fell in love with the desert hardwood, which looks much like teak.

Now in his own shop, he and six other men are kept busy making furniture and cabinets of this beautifully textured wood.

Although he built armoires originally of ponderosa pine, as did the Hispanic settlers of Tucson, Paul now makes the pieces of mesquite, selling them for $2,100 and up. Paul's pieces are mainly of what he calls "Sonoran Victorian" design.

His mesquite supplier is Bob Abolt, who abandoned a career in nuclear engineering to take a master's degree in business administration at the University of Arizona. Abolt, who always wanted to get into business for himself, set up a small sawmill near Vail, southeast of Tucson. He produces lumber from mesquite and other locally grown trees. His customers are Tucson craftsmen who use mesquite for flooring as well as cabinets.

Abolt would like to see mesquite tree farms. He estimates that 1,000 acres that could be irrigated between summer and winter rains would have a sustained yield that could supply him indefinitely.

Because of the way mesquite grows, there is a lot of waste in its lumber. Then, says furniture maker Paul, "it's only firewood."

But even as firewood, mesquite's unusual qualities make it a talisman of the Southwest. Like the desert itself, it lures the traveler back. And it brings to mind an anecdote involving this writer's daughter-in-law, Echo Daugherty-Farrell, a member of the staff of the Phoenix and Valley of the Sun Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Part of Echo's job is to show representatives of various companies and organizations what is available in the way of convention facilities. One Eastern client who happened to get a whiff of a mesquite fire was enchanted.

Echo was able to sell him on holding his organization's convention in the Valley of the Sun by tossing a "mesquite clause" into the negotiations.