opportunists

Over the past 10 plus years that I have had this land and especially since I retired, I have observed that each growing season there is the perfect condition for some plant to do exceptionally well. The right temperature, the necessary amount of moisture especially  at the right time, some plant flourishes. My land has an abundance of Blue Gramma, a native grass. With roots that go down five plus feet it is a plant that is extremely important to the desert because of it’s role in eliminating erosion especially wind erosion. A couple of years ago we had our regularly timed monsoons- late June through July and most of August. In this part of NM our average annual amount of precipitation used to be 12 to 13 inches, but the last 6, 7 years it has been from 6 to 8 inches. The Blue Gramma, a warm weather grass exploded. Everywhere three foot stalks of grass grew with such proliferation that at times I could imagine the Kansas wheat fields waving in the wind. Note, just because the timing of the monsoon that year was as usual, the average annual precipitation  is also dependent on snow and other moisture events at other times of the year and that year there was again a shortfall of moisture.

And last year the ideal conditions prevailed – early rains in April and May and some in July for the snakeweed to emerge in June, a low plant with many yellow flowers. The land was a blanket of gold which lasted through the summer and finally receded in intensity of yellow giving way to the sage and its darker golden fall color. That year because of the early coverage on the land with snakeweed, the Blue Gramma took a back seat and didn’t do so well.