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Useful Plants for Native Sonoran Desert Habitat
Useful Plants for Native Sonoran Desert Habitat in Tucson - Pdf list of plants, their characteristics and use to wildlife
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Wolfberry ( Lycium fremontii )
The weather is warm and there are lots of native plants available at nurseries. Many of you are thinking about planting some natives in your landscape to create habitat for birds.
If you are in the early stages of planning your landscape, you might want to draw your design and contour the land during the warm months. October is a great time to plant most desert plants. By then air temperatures have cooled but soil temperatures remain high, encouraging root growth before winter rains set in.
If you are ready to go now, make sure you keep plants well watered through May and June, our hottest, driest months. Try to provide them some shade from the afternoon sun.
There are many native desert plants from which to choose. I am working on a list of the most useful ones, which will be available in the Audubon Nature Shops. I will also feature one here in future articles.
One of my favorite desert plants is wolfberry ( Lycium fremontii ). Wolfberry is drought-adapted, losing leaves during dry times and regrowing them when moisture is available. No irrigation is necessary after they are established.
They are useful because they have many functions. They tend to grow dense and thorny, providing cover in which small birds can hide from predators. Their small lavender flowers, which emerge any time enough moisture is available, but are most abundant January through March, attracting pollinators. Though not tubular, I've seen hummingbirds foraging on them. Some pollinating insects that come to the flowers may, in turn, attract insectivorous birds.
Wolfberry fruits are small, orangish-red berries that are eaten by wildlife (and by humans who like special desert treats). I think of them as little tomatoes, and indeed they are in the same family. Birds that eat fruit will like them too!
Wolfberry can become a large shrub under the right conditions, like the 6-foot-plus ones in the front yard of the University Boulevard Nature Shop. In poorer, drier soils they will stay smaller. They grow slowly, so if you buy a small individual in a one-gallon pot, allow it quite a while to fill in.
Wolfberries have an unrefined, scrubby appearance, though they will appear quite lush when fully leafed. It is a good shrub for filling in background areas along fences and walls, or other places to which you don't need easy access. Keeping them in the background may help if you think they look unsightly during the leafless times of the year.
Planting them in a landscape that harvests and infiltrates rainwater will assure maximum soil moisture and help keep the plant lush longer.
There are several other species of Lycium that are native to our region, including L. andersonii, L. berlandieri, L. exsertum and L. pallidum. Although they are generally similar to L. fremontii, check at the nursery for the differing characteristics of these other species.
Enjoy your landscape!
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This page was updated on 07/05/06