The Bird Whisperer: Ocotillo project at West Clear Creek

A couple of weeks ago our field ecology class went down to West Clear Creek near Camp Verde to pick our third group projects for the class. After wandering around the area, we met back together and discussed potential research questions before dividing up into groups to tackle different projects. For our project, my crew member Jackson and I are going to be looking at the growth differences of the desert plant, ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens), across different soil types. There was a paper done in 1990 on ocotillos where the researchers took rootless cuttings of ocotillos and placed them in water. Within 24-48 hours they had new leaves already sprouting and after a period of 8 days the largest leaves were already an inch long! Ocotillos are unique in their adaptation to arid climates in that they can quickly sprout leaves whenever precipitation occurs. The leaves last for only a few weeks and then are dropped. The stems of the plant are partially photosynthetic too, but in the 1990 study they believed that ocotillos use nutrients stored in the stems periodically throughout the year for sprouting the new leaves, rather than depleting the soil of most nutrients at once. For our study we have put cuttings of ocotillos in water in a greenhouse and are waiting to see if we get leaves to sprout as quickly as in the previous study. Even if this doesn't work within the timeline we have to do our project, we are also going to be measuring growth rings in the wood for plants growing on different soil types (basaltic and limestone). Ocotillos are a dicot and produce annual growth rings like other woody plants.

Anyways, here are some photos of ocotillos, the surrounding desert habitat, the riparian habitat along West Clear Creek, and various plants and animals encountered along the way so far.

Ocotillos:

Ocotillos typically bloom in the spring during the peak of the northward hummingbird migration. However, during years with above-average precipitation during the summer monsoons in the Southwest, some ocotillos will produce flowers in late summer or fall. Above West Clear Creek we found a couple of ocotillos that were still in bloom:

With the above-average temperatures we've had into this November, there were some other desert flowers still in bloom at the upland sites with ocotillos. Here are some examples:

four o'clock (Mirabilis sp.):

spreading fanpetals (Sida filicaulis, or S. abutifolia). Interestingly, the leaves and stems resemble noseburn (Tragia nepetifolia):

Arizona caltrop (Kallstroemia grandiflora). The second photo has some kind of checkered-skipper butterfly visiting one of the caltrop flowers:

Bee brush (Aloysia wrightii). This plant has a very nice odor and, like its name suggests, it is attractive to insect pollinators. Here is a photo of the indistinct white flowers and the leaves:

roughseed clammyweed (Polanisia dodecandra). An annual plant related to beeplants (Cleome spp.):

Along with flowers, there were loads of arthropods (arachnids and insects) around the desert too. Last Monday we encountered a praying mantis, a couple of stink (darkling) beetles and ants eating a roadkill grasshopper, and a couple of small tarantulas. During the fall, tarantulas go searching for mates. Here are some pics:

While collecting ocotillo samples one day, a Cactus Wren was pissed at me when I got too close to its prickly pear cactus patch. Cactus Wren is the largest wren species that occurs in the U.S. (reaching 8.5 inches long) and is also Arizona's state bird. This individual was very photogenic:

Another cool sighting while collecting data was seeing a small western patch-nosed snake slither in front of me and take refuge under a prickly pear cactus (a snake I had never seen before):

Although we haven't seen any larger mammals like javelina or mule deer, we have seen evidence of them around. This prickly pear cactus has been munched on by a javelina (or collared peccary, a native pig to the Southwest):

West Clear Creek drains off of the Mogollon Rim and is a tributary of the Verde River. The riparian vegetation along the creek is very lush, dominated by Arizona alder (Alnus oblongifolia), Fremont cottonwood (Populus fremontii), Arizona sycamore (Platanus wrightii), velvet ash (Fraxinus velutina), and willow species (Salix spp.), mixed with red-berry juniper (Juniperus erythrocarpa), velvet mesquite (Prosopis velutina), and netleaf hackberry (Celtis reticulata). There are also unique "hanging gardens" growing along a very long seep on the north-facing slope above the creek. The seep supports plants like maidenhair fern (Adiantum sp.), cutleaf coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata), monkeyflowers (Mimulus spp.), and columbines (Aquilegia spp.). Here are some photos of the drainage, including the hanging gardens:

Arizona sycamore (Platanus wrightii) leaves:

Out-of-place ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) sapling growing in riparian area. We saw a few pine cones in the creek bed too, so these ones are just carried down from where the drainage starts at higher elevations on the Mogollon Rim. It's still weird to see a ponderosa pine growing not that far from mesquites and ocotillos!