Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey
Series produced by KXCI
Petey Mesquitey is KXCI’s resident storyteller.
Every week since the spring of 1992 Petey has delighted KXCI listeners with slide shows and poems, stories and songs about flora, fauna, family and the glory of living in southern Arizona.
211 Pieces
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Oldest First
I do love wandering around little towns and Willcox is a fun one to poke around in. And it is true that the town of Willcox is an excellent base c...
- Added: Jun 19, 2019
- Length: 05:06
I know that being in the moment or being here now is important, but I confess to spending a lot of time wanting to be there now and I’ll be happy t...
- Added: Jun 19, 2019
- Length: 05:03
Oh my goodness, there are beetles, bees and moths that visit the open flowers of Calylophus harwegii from late afternoon and through the night. Som...
- Added: May 23, 2019
- Length: 05:45
Well, I was a little worried, but I was pretty close on the number of Penstemon species in Arizona. There are close to forty. Arizona Flora lists t...
- Added: May 16, 2019
- Length: 04:47
I sure talk about a lot different flora and fauna. From three species of quail, to canyon wrens, to Yarrows spiny lizards, to bristlehead (Carphoch...
- Added: May 16, 2019
- Length: 05:30
There are 13 species of oaks found in Arizona and they range from 3,000 to 8,000 feet in elevation across the state. The only one I haven’t seen i...
- Added: Apr 24, 2019
- Length: 05:07
Snow is such an exciting event for those of us living in southern Arizona and when it does snow the local jabber is always about famous snow falls ...
- Added: Apr 02, 2019
- Length: 05:07
I’ve known barn owls since I was a kid in Kentucky and I always saw them in barns roosting or nesting up high in the rafters. I remember finding a ...
- Added: Apr 02, 2019
- Length: 04:57
Desert anemone (Anemone tuberosa) is in the Buttercup Family. Buttercups are the genus Ranuculus and so the family name is Ranunculaceae. It’s prob...
- Added: Apr 02, 2019
- Length: 05:02
Lesquerella is named in honor of Leo Lesquereaux and Wikipedia reminds me that he was a “Swiss bryologist and a pioneer of American paleobotany.” S...
- Added: Apr 02, 2019
- Length: 10:00
The scientific name of the black swallowtail is Papilio polyxenes. Papilio is from the Latin for butterfly and the specific epithet polyxenes is fr...
- Added: Mar 26, 2019
- Length: 05:04
Well, it was a cold winter, but as I sit and write this blurb it is 75 degrees outside with overnight lows in the low 30s. Now that is classic sout...
- Added: Mar 26, 2019
- Length: 05:12
When we got our little homestead over 25 years ago, the woman we purchased it from told us, “Don’t forget to get the pecans off the tree by the cre...
- Added: Mar 26, 2019
- Length: 05:35
One of my favorite forests of chain-fruit cholla, also called jumping cholla, was in the desert on the north end of the Tortolita Mountains. Park L...
- Added: Feb 26, 2019
- Length: 05:48
Road trips with a truck load of native plants are a lot of work, but are especially satisfying when you head home with very few plants in the truck...
- Added: Feb 19, 2019
- Length: 06:16
think I talked more about Toumey oak (Quercus toumeyi) than yellow bells. It is an awfully sweet little native oak. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t occ...
- Added: Feb 19, 2019
- Length: 05:20
Western soapberry is Sapindus saponaria var. drummondii and is in the family Sapindaceae. In the soapberry family there are around twelve species. ...
- Added: Feb 19, 2019
- Length: 04:45
For goodness sake, I forgot to mention the black-tailed jackrabbit’s ears! The large ears are magnificent parabolic reflectors that keep them well ...
- Added: Feb 19, 2019
- Length: 05:30
Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa) is very common around out little homestead. There are thickets of it all along the banks of the Ol’ Guajolote. It ...
- Added: May 30, 2018
- Length: 11:28
Anisacanthus thurberi or desert honeysuckle is in the Acanthus family, Acanthaceae. I do like the common name cola de gallo, because it captures th...
- Added: May 30, 2018
- Length: 05:27
