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 camp for exploring southeastern Arizona. Now a days Willcox bills itself as wine country and the capital of wine in Arizona. I find that funny, because when we moved to Cochise county about 24 years ago Willcox was trying to be the ratite capital of Arizona. Everyone and their brother or sister were raising ostriches or emus and…I’m not making this up…local restaurants were serving emu and ostrich meat. Things sure changed quickly and now it seems everyone and their brother or sister have a vineyard. Who’s to say what will be after vineyards …stay tuned.
Apacheria plume as a common name won’t get any traction. I was just thinking it would be cool to have the plant named for a region, but there is already a plant in the Chiricahua Mtns called Apacheria chiricahuensis, so dumb idea Petey and Apache plume it is!
In the borderlands look for Fallugia paradoxa between 3,500 ft. and 7,000 ft. on rocky slopes or out in the flats and of course roadside of those places. Did I mention it’s in the rose family, Rosaceae? I did now and that family is full of many cool plants. Let me see…the photos are mine of those plumose persistent styles and I’ve included a photo of the wall flower I was jabbering about as well, Erysimum capitatum. This is the yellow flowering variety, but if you get up high in the mountains you’ll find the orange flowering variety. Cool!
