PAST YEARS · 2025 · 2024 · 2023 · 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019
Each month our editor, Laura Lukes, highlights an outstanding plant, interesting insect, or helpful tool.
January: The Lost Language of Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicines for Life on Earth by Stephen Harrod Buhner
This fascinating book was first published almost twenty years ago, but still has much to teach us—perhaps even more so now that many more plant species are threatened with habitat loss and pressures from climate change. Buhner’s specialty is herbal medicine, and he is at his best when investigating and explaining the complex interrelationships in ecosystems, particularly those between plants and animals, and how plants have been used by all life on earth to protect against disease and promote health. Here are a few intriguing examples:
- After hibernating for the cold season, one of the first things bears do is to dig up Osha plants (Ligusticum porteri)—also called bear root. They ingest some of the plant, and chew the rest with their saliva to form a thin paste which they then spray and rub onto their fur. Here’s the kicker: Osha has antibiotic, antiviral, and antiparasitic properties, helping rid their fur of any parasites, as well as being an antihelminthic, which helps clean their intestinal tract of worms.
- For control of intestinal worms, boars in India dig up pigweed (Boerhavia diffusa) roots and those in Mexico use pomegranate roots: the roots of both plants are high in anthelminthic compounds.
- Towards the end of their pregnancies, elephants in Kenya seek out and consume the leaves and woody trunk of a specific tree also used by Kenyan women to facilitate childbirth.
Buhner notes that humans “have used plants for…healing as long as we have been. Medicinal herbs have been found in a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal grave, and written records over the past 6,000 years have recorded the use of more than 80,000 different plants as medicine.”
Background photo by Steve Jurvetson. Published by Chelsea Green Publishing.
February: Fastest Thing on Wings
Terry Masear’s fascinating book about hummingbird rescue and rehabilitation (Fastest Things on Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood, 2018) has been made into a documentary movie titled Every Little Thing. Hummingbird rescue season is spring and summer, and Masear has devoted herself to hummingbird capture, rehabilitation, and eventual release back into the wild 24/7 during these six months of each year since 2004. Each year, Masear’s non-profit Los Angeles Hummingbird Rescue gets thousands of calls! The movie follows Masear during the 2022 rescue season. Her dedication and resourcefulness in dealing with these tiny creatures is inspirational. We highly recommend both the book and the film!
March: Desert Willow Chilopsis Linearis
About eight years ago the Master Gardeners planted a Desert Willow (Chilopsis linearis) in the Demonstration Garden. This is a beautiful small tree prized in dry gardens for its showy and fragrant blossoms which cover the tree in the long, hot days of summer. When many native bloomers are past their spring glory and entering semi-dormancy to protect against heat and drought, the Desert Willow is just getting started. It does best in full sun, and will become leggy and thin in part shade. It’s extremely drought resistant and will succumb to root rot if not planted in a well-drained, seldom-irrigated location.
The Desert Willow is native to the Southwestern US and Northern Mexico; its native range in California is restricted to the arid southern portions of our state, primarily San Bernadino and Riverside counties. However, anywhere that’s hot, sunny, and dry, and not above 5,000 feet in elevation will support this hardy tree, which has a life span of 40 to 150 years. Where it occurs in nature, it creates the feeling of a small oasis in the middle of dry desert washes. As a landscape specimen, it adds a lush look to the native, drought-resistant garden during the heat of summer.
Frost Chart
The National Gardening Association has a handy and well-explained frost chart which will help us all determine when it’s safest to plant our vegetable starts, and how long we can depend on frost-free weather in the fall. This link goes directly to the chart for Chico, and if you scroll down from there you will find links for charts attuned to other towns and cities in Butte County.
Here is an example of the valuable information included in the chart for Chico: “In your average springtime, you have a 90% chance that there will be no 36° nights by May 6. In other words, you can pretty much count on being safe from frost by that day. But we want to get those tomatoes in the ground as soon as possible, right? We see that there's still an 80% chance of 36° on March 28, so we don't dare plant that early. We wait a few days and by April 13 we are at the 50/50 point. At this point, we are close and we can start watching the weather forecast. If the upcoming week's forecast doesn't show below 40°, then it's probably okay to risk planting out your plants.”
Bookmark Frost Dates: First and last frost dates for Chico, California and never lose another vegetable start!