Shin dagger

Every desert has it's signature cactus; the saguaro in the Sonora; Joshua Tree in the Mohave; and, the lechuguella (technically an agave) found only in the Chihuahuan Desert. Big Bend National Park lies in the northern part of the Chihuahan Desert, the largest of North America's four major deserts. A young desert, only 8,000 years old, its rainfall comes mostly in the July - October monsoons.

This morning's Ranger Program, called "What is Blooming Now?", was led by Peggy Spruell, a National Park's Volunteer. She began by telling us that it has been a great spring with lots of rain and that the blooms are exceptional. Peggy told us she is not a botanist and she clutched two field guide books which she would periodically hand-around.

Peggy Spruell, National Parks Volunteer.

She began by saying that there are some basic classes of vegetation, beginning with trees. Trees have a single trunk and bark. The only place you will find trees in the Park are at springs and in the mountains.

Next up are the shrubs with woody stems, not as big as trees with small leaves.

This is creosote, a lovely shrub seen all over the park. It is also called greasewood. Creosote has open branches to allow rain to reach the soil under the plant and it leaves produce a toxin to keep other plants from growing under and around it - so it can hog water. After a rain it will exude a pleasant smell which we have experienced on our hikes.

Lechuguella, which means "little lettuce", also called "shin dagger" because of its sharp thorns, is unique to the Chihuahuan Desert. A succulent, its stems store water, these two are recovering from a freeze three years ago. You can see the dead spines on the ground. 

It was a useful plant for the Native Americans and early settlers. One use was as a pre-threaded sewing needle. The tips are very sharp and the attached fibers are strong.

With lavender, pinkish blooms, the Torry yucca is the show-stopper all over the Park this spring. The individual blossoms hang down and are pollinated by moths. There are six different yuccas in the Park. The yucca roots contain a sap called sappine  used in laundry detergent because it helps to "float dirt away".

One of Frederick's favorite cactus, the cholla is also a favorite of birds who will build their nests where three spines branch from a main stalk. A cactus has no leaves - its spines would be leaves.

The stems of the candela are cover in a wax that had commercial purposes. At one time there was a wax factory in the park that would remove the wax in vats of sulfuric acid. The acid would burn off the stems and the wax would float to the surface. This wax was used to coat tin that was used for food in World War I & II.

There were a number of shrubs that Peggy showed us, the Guayacan, Mexican Buck-eye, Desert Willow, Acacia, Texas persimmon and the evergreen sumac. 

One of the interesting things we learned is that there is a variety of prickly-pear, one of twenty in the Park, that does not have the long thorns and is called the Blind Prickley-Pear. It still has the small, barbed thorns, but it does look naked.

We ended our plant appreciation hike at the end of the dramatic Burro Mesa Pouroff. When it rains, the water pours over the rock at the top down this narrow pipe and flows through the wash that we were walking on. If rain had been predicted, our hike would have been cancelled.

There were a number of birds inhabiting the end-of-the-canyon walls, and bird-watchers watching them.

We met Leon, a retired geologist, who described the volcanic activity that formed the canyon walls around us.

The light colored middle layer is ash from an ancient volcano and the darker rock on top is the lava that flowed out and covered the ash. There's more to it than that, but we won't go into that just now.

The Chimneys Trail starts from the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, a little south from where we attended the Ranger Program. We went a little over 5.3 miles round trip.

A pretty flat trail, it did descend a bit to the chimneys.

The Chimneys, an eroded dike that is visible for miles, have served as an important landmark for hundreds of years.

We ate our lunch at the base of the solitary chimney to the left in the picture above. There were also these remains of shelters used by herders.

There was another shelter about half way up the chimney..,

and American Indian pictographs (pen for scale) and petroglyphs.

More pictographs on the walls of the chimney (hiking pole on the left for scale).

We were particularly observant of wildflowers and flowering cactus. This little guy was only about 10 inches high.

A prickly-pear in bloom. Some of these blooms will turn into "pears" and some will form new lobes (see on the right side of the cactus).

This cactus had buds that were just beginning to bloom but had not fully opened yet.