There are a thousand stories about mesquite. Some people hate it and poison it with chemicals. Some people love the wood for its rich, dark hardness and use it for gun butts, clocks, tables, or rolling pins, or for the flavor it adds to grilled foods.
Some folktales about mesquite are repeated as fact. “Mesquite came here with Spanish cattle,” is a belief that masquerades as knowledge. At many Indian campsites there is proof in the charcoal that mesquite has been here for centuries. In the Florrisant Fossil Beds in Colorado, scientists have dated fossilized mesquite leaves to 75 million years ago.
Fires started by American Indians or natural lightning burned many sites in West Texas at least once a decade. Five million buffalo on the Llano Estacado stomped any scrawny mesquite seedlings that managed to escape the fires en masse every time a herd passed by. During the time of the buffalo prairie, mesquite was only able to grow to substantial size in draws and playas with shallow water tables where fires were slowed by damp soils and vegetation.
In the first drought after cattlemen began stocking the land, the cattle overgrazed the buffalo prairie. The cattle ate any mesquite bean that could be found, and in the resulting cow patties the mesquite seeds found ideal conditions for germination. Surrounded by moist fertilizer and close to bare ground, the seedlings germinated miles from the parent plant.
The early day cattlemen hated prairie dogs (for the broken legs of running horses and cattle) and killed millions of them. Prairie dogs controlled mesquite seedlings on the buffalo prairie. Within fifty years, most of the buffalo prairie became covered with mesquite bushes. The natural controls of mesquite -- fire and grazing by prairie dogs had been eliminated.
The Sibley Nature Center has a two foot diameter mesquite trunk cut to display the rings of the wood, which are so close together that the separate rings are mostly indistinguishable. The specimen came from a hill overlooking a large salt lake (or salina). The only naturally occurring surface water in Midland County is a spring which rises a quarter of a mile from where the old mesquite once grew.
Mesquite becomes a symbol of fear for townspeople. “Don’t go in a vacant lot and play near those nasty thornbushes,” mothers tell their children. “Stay inside, out of the heat, away from the snakes and stickerburs.”
Mesquite is often hated by ranchers as well. “Durn ‘brush’,” they call it, “It sucks up all the rain water and does not let grass grow.” Along the North Concho River, the Natural Resources Conservation Service used federal money to help ranchers eradicate mesquite in long strips. The remaining mesquite provides wildlife cover and prevents wind erosion. Dried-up springs began running again after the removal of 50 percent of the mesquite.
Yet other ranchers like mesquite. “Look under the little trees- the grass stays greener longer, and better quality species grow there. The leaves and beans of the plant put nitrogen into the soil - and since it’s a legume, it probably has nitrogen-fixing nodules on the roots. It would be stupid to kill a natural fertilizer factory.”
There’s an old saying in mesquite country: “Mesquite does not leaf out in until after the last frost. And like a lot of folk sayings it contains a grain of truth. Most years the saying holds true. Every once in a while, though, a late cold front blasts in and four inches of snow suddenly adorn fully-leafed mesquites.
Nature Notes is sponsored by the Dixon Water Foundation and is produced by KRTS Marfa Public Radio in cooperation with the Sibley Nature Center in Midland, Texas. This episode was written by Burr Williams of the Sibley Nature Center.
