MEXICAN PONYTAILS

Most of my hike back to town took place in cattle-chewed, cactus-rich scrub. On my second night out I camped next to a plant some potted-plant-loving North Americans might find vaguely familiar, the one shown at the right.

Local Mexicans call it Palmilla, saying it's a kind of palm, but if you look closely you'll see that it's very unpalmlike. For one thing, it's stem branches, and palm trunks rarely branch. For another, the leaves are neither palmately nor pinnately compound, like the vast majority of palms, but rather are long and slender like a sword's blade. Some of these plants are fruiting now and if you could see the fruit you'd see that it's not at all like a typical palm fruit -- like a small coconut -- but rather it's a dry, lightweight capsule.

In fact, this palmlike tree is a member of the Lily Family, not the Palm. In North America small potted specimens with gray trunks expanding enormously at their bases, and topped with topknots of arching, slender, green blades are sold under the trade names of Mexican Ponytail, Ponytail Palm, Bottle Palm, Elephant's Foot and other names as well. The species sold in pots is usually Beaucarnea recurvata. I think that ours is BEAUCARNEA PLIABILIS, because I've seen that species listed for the Yucatan. It's also listed as a threatened species. A page showing a potted Beaucarnea and describing its care is at http://www.plant-care.com/1602-ponytail-palm.html.

Our Beaucarnea pliabilis rises above the surrounding low, thorny scrub rather majestically, lending the landscape an extra touch of exotic feeling. In the picture you can see its swollen trunk-base, explaining one of it's names, "Elephant's Foot." This swollen trunk serves as a water- storage structure. Overwatered, store-bought potted specimens often possess grotesquely large, spherical boles with teeny, green topknots.

On the night I pitched my tent next to the Beaucarnea in the picture the wind roared across the scrub from dusk to dawn. Several times in profound darkness I awakened and just listened to the wind streaming through the tree's jutting-out branches and causing its stiff blades to flap and clack against one another. It was a homey feeling lying beside such a distinguished being, knowing its roots ran beneath where I lay on the ground.

In the morning an endemic Yucatan Wren came with its husky krrohrrrrr complaint glaring at my tent as he hung onto the Beaucarnea the way you expect a wren to do, even an endemic one.

"Krrohrrrrr yourself," I replied similarly huskily, feeling just splendid, with a full night of wind-roar and Beaucarnea-flapping and -clacking energy churning around inside me.