#palo verde

[urbansoulfarmer]

Restoration project in 29 Palms.

[fatchance]

Harris's antelope squirrel (Ammospermophilus harrisii) high in a treetop, devouring palo verde seeds. At Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix, Arizona.

[missivoryrainbow]

I painted a palo verde dragon to celebrate the lunar new year.

Palo Verdes are native to the Sonoran desert. Their names translate to mean "green stick".

Every year in the lunar zodiac has am element, and this year's is wood. I've always loved these green twisty trees, even if they do have thorns.

[dbtucson-blog]

Happy belated (June 9, 2000) 23rd birthday Ironwood Forest National Monument!

[thetwistedrope]

yellow month came late this year

eons ago i wrote about our version of hanami, what i called desert hanami, where i would go out and look at the palo verde blossoms in the spring. much like sakura hanami, the blossoms of the palo verde come on quickly and are fleeting as the increasing summer heat ramps up in May.

only recently i learned about Yellow Month, a designation on the Tohono O'odham calendar (see below, highlighted yellow), and so i've slowly come around to calling this time yellow month (because the desert's favorite bloom color is yellow) as opposed to desert hanami.

because of the atmospheric rivers, our yellow month started quite late - late April (as opposed to late March). but the trees are in full bloom now, which is great news.

palo verde trees are incredibly important for desert survival. you can eat the buds of the flowers. you can eat the flowers (and some ppl brew them as tea). and most importantly, you can eat the beans. Tohono O'odham used to ferment the beans into a drink, keeping the beans in large ponds of water, drinking from it as they aged/fermented. the most common usage of these beans today is to grind them up and bake with them.

but more importantly, they're vital for animals. we used to have a bunch of large pipes out here, and when you'd tip them up in the middle of summer, you'd have tons of beans slides out, packed away by rats and squirrels to make it through the hot dead summer. we don't typically harvest our beans because we'd rather leave them for local animals to use.

these trees are a staple for our local ecology, and they are at risk due to climate change (x). compared to mesquites and ironwood trees, palo verde is less tolerant to the heat, and succumbs to disease more readily when its hot and dry. almost every single palo verde on my property has some amount of disease, and there is very little to be done about it.

i personally love how you can spot every palo verde on the mountain side because they're so bright and yellow compared to the surrounding area. unfortunately, a lot of ppl who live here find them annoying as their petals litter the ground, but to me, its like desert's form of sakura. something to be enjoyed for the brief moment they're here each spring.

[sabistarphotos]

April 17, 2021

Phoenix, AZ

[evilmcweevil]

good ol works in progress 🐍

[rhiannatruex]

palo verde | instagram

[mossy-bonez]

Look at this tree they are everywhere in southern Arizona, they are called pallo verde and they bloom like this every spring, they look like re colored cherry trees. the flowers are edible as well as the seeds, both when they are green and when they are fully mature. When they are green you can pick them off of the tree and eat them raw, this is around the summer solstice(it has been getting earlier and earlier due to climate change) which has given them the nickname of solstice beans. When they are mature and dried up they take a bit more work to prepare but are so worth it. I love these trees so much they are so amazing. But I’m fucking allergic to them, this isn’t even a common allergy, but no I had to be allergic to their god damn pollen and can’t even enjoy sitting out side and looking at how cool they are for more than a few minutes. I’m just so done with allergies. Thanks for listening to my Ted talk.

[criminal-delirium]

[crudlynaturephotos]

[fatchance]

Untitled.

[michael-massa-micon]

Sea of Blue - March 2023 When you are stopped in traffic the one plus side is that you can take good pictures of the wildflowers alongside the interstate. On Kathy’s side of the car was an astounding view of brittlebush, creosote bush, mesquite, and palo verde trees stretching out to the mountains on the horizon. And running through all of that was something that appeared, at first glance, to be water. It was not. It was a flowing sea of Purple Lupine. MWM

[dbtucson-blog]

Wide View, Raggedtop in Spring

[ancientnomad-places]

View from my patio

[sabistarphotos]

April 2, 2018