Title: Mesquite - description, history, use and benefits
Headings: MESQUITE

Content: During extreme drought, the
mesquites may shed their leaves to
further conserve moisture. Their
flowers, fragrant and delicate,
attract the insects, especially the
bees, necessary for prolific
pollination. Their seeds, abundant
and protectively coated, may last
for decades, serving as seed
banks that improve the odds for
wide distribution and successful
germination. Most notably, mesquites’ root
systems give the plants a
competitive botanical edge in the
desert landscape. As hosts to
nitrogen-fixing bacteria, they help
enrich otherwise impoverished
desert soils in which the plants and
their progeny grow. In lateral reach,
they out compete other plants in the
battle for soil moisture. In their
taproots’ downward reach, they find
subsurface water, sometimes 150
to perhaps 200 feet below the
surface. According to the Arizona-
Sonora Desert Museum Internet
site, “The mesquite’s root system is
the deepest documented; a live
root was discovered in a copper
mine over 160 feet (50 meters)
below the surface.” During the Ice Ages, which lasted from about
1.8 million to some 10,000 years ago, the
mesquites “coevolved with large herbivores,
such as mastodons and ground sloths, which
ate the pods and then dispersed them widely
in their feces,” said the Arizona-Sonora Desert
Museum Internet site.