Las Cruces, New Mexico is the home of New Mexico State University (NMSU), where two of my friends teach: evoutionary biologist Avis James (named by a mother who was an ornithologist), and ecologist Bill Boecklen. I’ve known Avis for a long time, since she was a postdoc at Chicago working on flies, and later became friends with Bill when the two got married. I visited their home in Las Cruces, which they share with a calico cat named Janet, and after two days we repaired to the mountains to visit one of their friends.
First we tended that friend’s garden in his Las Cruces home, picking vegetables to bring up to the mountains. Here are Avis and Bill with some of our haul:
And, of course, no garden in New Mexico would be complete without chiles, the most characteristic ingredient in New Mexican cooking. I favor the green over the red chile.
For breakfast on the day after my arrival, we went to a famous Las Cruces spot, Nellie’s Cafe. It specializes in New Mexican cuisine, and nearly every dish, including breakfast, features the ubiquitous chile.
This is breakfast, which looks like lunch but still satisfied the morning food urge. Along with chips and salsa, I got a mixed plate with a “chile” (pork cubes cooked with scorching green chiles), an enchilada, and a chicken taco, along with rice and delicious refried beans:
Afterwards we repaired to the county government center, which houses the famous Doña Ana County Kitty Condo, which I’ve posted about before. It’s where all the county’s bureaucracy is housed, but has a distinctly un-bureaucratic feature, a cat adoption center, started by Bill and Avis’s friend Jess Williams.
Enlarge the sign below to read about the Kitty Condos. In short, it’s a large, walk-in cage that houses up to a dozen kittens (they take only young kittens). You can walk into the cage and play with them, or, if you’re working in the building, you can check out a kitten to take to your office for 15 minutes, just as if they were tiny felid library books. That interaction, of course, leads many to fall in love with the kittens—the object of the project.
Here’s the large Kitty Condo cage, which housed only two kittens at the time: a tabby and a tuxedo cat (you can see them both at lower left). The sign about one of them “not feeling well” indicates that one had ringworm, but it had been cured. Note that every kitten put into the Condo (now 101) has been adopted:
I sat in the cage and played with the tiny tabby, who was a real sweetheart. I can see why so many get adopted.
Here’s a video I posted earlier about the Condo project:
Meanwhile, back at the James/Boecklen ranch, they have their own cat, Janet:
Janet isn’t allowed to go out front, and she often stands on two legs peering out the front screened door:
Another meal in Las Cruces, this time at La Neuva Casita Cafe, which TripAdvisor rates as the best restaurant in town. Like Nellie’s, it’s a humble, family-owned place that serves great homemade New Mexican food.
My dinner: a chicken chimichanga covered with guacamole, sour cream, and picante sauce to resemble the Mexican flag. Served with a salad, fideo (Mexican noodles), and rice, it was more than I could eat. Bill and Avis pronounced it good, but not as good as Nellie’s.
We did a several-hour hike in Dripping Springs National Monument in the Organ Mountains. An uphill hike (in brutal heat) took us to a verdant spring where water flows out of the rocks. Although I didn’t bring water, because I was stupid, I couldn’t drink from the spring for fear of giardia. Fortunately, Bill and Avis had extra water for me.
This is a view from up in the mountain toward Las Cruces in the valley below. The plants are ocotillos (Fouquieria splendens), endemic to the southwest US and northern Mexico. The stems are usually gray, leafless, and dry, but they respond to the sporadic rains by putting out leaves.
More ocotillo and the flowering spikes of sotol (Dasylirion wheeleri), whose base in Mexico is fermented, like agave, to make an alcoholic drink (one plant = one bottle). I’m told it tastes dreadful.
This unusual plant, ephedra (Ephedra fasciculata), also known as “Mormon tea” for its curative properties (I’ve had the tea), is a gymnosperm, like pines, but has flowers like an angiosperm (a flowering plant). The flowers are scaly, as if the plant was a “missing link”. It’s one of the three genera in the Gnetophyta, which is taxonomically grouped with gymnosperms, but I’m not sure if that taxonomic placement is firm, or if the group is more closely related to angiosperms.
I’m certain some botanist will weigh in with the latest assessment, but meanwhile enjoy a flower on a non-angiosperm plant:
The desert was loaded with cacti (many people use them as ornamentals in their yards, as watering is “un-green” in New Mexico). Here are three species, and I’ll leave it to readers to identify them. At least one or two should be easy, at least for Americans:
After the heat of Las Cruces we drove up to to Cloudcroft, New Mexico, which, at 8600 feet, is considerably cooler than the lowlands. There resides geologist Steve Henry, an old friend of Avis and Bill who invited us to stay in his “cabin,” a gorgeous, four-story log and stone construction that he and his wife built around an old railroad workers’ dormitory.
From the porch you get a long view down to the desert, including the famous White Sands National Monument, a gypsum desert where many animals have evolved white coloration to hide from predators or prey. You can see the white flats in the distance:
Nearly everyone I’ve met on my trip has several bird feeders, probably because they like biology and animals. Steve loads some of his up with pecans, which are locally grown. That was a real treat for this lucky woodpecker (identify the species!):
Steve also collects local arrowheads, some of which may be several thousand years old. Here’s his collection (you can often just pick them up off the ground):
Shortly after arriving, we went for a hike in the cool forest with Steve and his d*g. He was searching for mushrooms to eat, and though we found some, they weren’t the edible kind. Instead, we ambled about the trees and meadows and picked wildflowers. Here’s Steve and the canid:
This is in all likelihood a fox den:
Here are some native wildflowers we saw on our hike. Botanists should be able to identify them easily:
One with an orthopteran:
Same plant but with lepidopteran (name the species):
Avis with a bouquet of the flowers she picked. She exclaimed, “Isn’t it beautiful?” and Bill replied, “Yes, and the flowers are nice, too.” What a romantic!
On the way back from the trailhead, Steve stopped at some limestone road cuts so we could look for fossils. He said that this deposit was about 230 million years old. In it we found brachiopods, other shelly stuff, and I came upon part of a largish ammonite:
Avis prepared a great dinner of grilled salmon, tomato-and-cheese tart, and bread, which we ate with some tasty microbrews from Las Cruces, as well as some sauvignon blanc. We dined on the back porch overlooking the valley: life doesn’t get much more pleasant than this (note the wildflowers on the table):
I’m so hungry now for some good New Mexican food or any kind of squash… You even hate zucchini bread?
… and zucchini lasagna is delicious! But then it gets buried in tomato sauce and cheese.
Zucchini makes a great low carb pasta replacement, but it can be a bit watery. Is there a procedure for dewatering it before use? Say, with salt (like eggplant) by osmosis, or by roasting?
The question of the place of carbs in the human diet is an interesting one that has been driving much debate recently.
What a pleasant visit. I tend to think of New Mexico and much of the south west as dry, dry desert and blinding heat. I am glad to know there are places like this. Beautiful.
We have plenty of dry desert and blinding heat.
But, we also have mountains, lakes, rivers, and some world-class skiing in the winter.
There are nine climate zones in the world. From Sandia Crest to the Rio Grande bosque there are seven, all but arctic and tropical. L
Since my plans to retire in the northwest have recently collapsed into the Pacific, perhaps I should investigate NM.
That would be a good idea. New Mexico is becoming more the place to look at for retirement, partly because Arizona, California and Texas are so overrun with people. New Mexico has the climate and cost of living that is attracting more all the time.
Might be more what Linda said, the varied climate zones. Arizona has variations, too, but our most populous areas are in the desert. As I write this at 7:49 a.m. In Phoenix, it’s 89 degrees, typical for July.
Sorry to hear that about your NW plans.
…and even the dry spots are bursting with life. You’d be hard pressed to find anywhere in North America that’s more arid or hotter than the Valley of the Sun…and, yet, it’s home to Phoenix South Mountain Park, the largest city park perhaps in the world, and bursting with all the iconic Sonoran Desert species. There’re saguaro forests, palo verde forests, lots of ocotillo and prickly pear, all sorts of scrub and bush (including some tasty berries) — plus all the matching animals, including lots of birds and bunnies and lizards and coyotes and likely bobcats.
The only places you’re going to find more barren than that…are parking lots. (Or, I suppose, salt flats.) Everywhere else that hasn’t been paved over or otherwise cleared, is going to be full of life.
b&
“Everywhere else that hasn’t been paved over or otherwise cleared, is going to be full of life”
I like that image. Life, while in some ways deprived, still able to put forth in abundance.
That’s very reassuring too, as we witness the Kepler spacecraft discovering plenty of potential abodes for living things. There could be 100 million planets that harbor life in our galaxy. As long as they have not yet been fully paved. Maybe we should hurry.
Last chance to see, so to speak….
b&
Wonderful snaps and travelogue! New Mexico is one of our more diverse states in terrain & climate so plenty to do and see there. Speaking of White Sands – we visited there on a vacation to New Mexico, and wandered around the dunes for a bit. I had no hat on and no sunglasses (like a ninny), and had the worst headache you can imagine that evening!
The pics of yummy food & beautiful scenery makes me want to go there again! And I especially love the pics of the ammonite & also Janet the kitty.
White Sands is open until midnight on nights when there is a full moon. Because there isn’t much moisture in the atmosphere to hold the heat in, temperatures plummet after sunset.
One of my memories as a kid was being out there after sundown, getting really cold, and burrowing into the dunes to get warm, as they still held the heat of the day, and then watching the moonrise while buried in sand up to my neck. L
That sounds wonderful!
I’ll add that to my bucket list – a nice soak in a white sand bath, at night.
White sand and a bright moon sounds magical! I’m jealous. And no blinding headache to boot! I will do that on the next visit to New Mexico.
Now that’s unique! To most of us, anyway–how perfect!
The butterfly is a painted lady, Vanessa cardui.
The butterfly is not V. cardui. I think it might be Vanessa virginiensis. V. virginiensis has two big eye spots on the lower side of the hind wing, while V. cardui has a row of four small eye spots. 🙂
The grasshopper is some kind of short horned grasshopper, likely in the spur-throated subfamily. That is all I got.
Brings back lots of memories from when I was a post-doc at NMSU. My favorite restaurant then (mid 1980s) was outside Las Cruces: Chopes Bar & Grill in La Mesa. A mom and pop restaurant in an old house off the highway to El Paso, with superb authentic NM cuisine, and a biker bar right next door!
The most famous restaurant was La Posta – featured in Life Magazine decades ago, which if I remember, was in nearby Mesilla, where Billy the Kid was jailed.
Next to the last cactus picture is the shrub creosotebush (Larrea tridentata) which I worked on. It orients its leaves to face SE, probably to maximize its water use efficiency. The most drought tolerant shrub in North America.
The Las Cruces area also is a rich agricultural area, growing dozens of different crops, courtesy of irrigation water from the Rio Grande. Want to go back!
Enjoy the rest of your time in NM!
Would you believe, Chope’s is still there? They moved out of their living room into an actual separate building, but the food is the same, and people still come from everywhere to eat there.
When I was a student at NMSU, I lived in Mesquite, not far from La Mesa, and ate there a lot. L
As I recall, I was told that Chopes, though still around, has gone downhill considerably, and is inferior to several other places.
I haven’t been there in years.
But, I just Googled it, and they’re still getting rave reviews from everywhere. L
We took Jerry to Chopes last time he came to visit. A lot of people from Las Cruces go there. About 5 years ago I think it was suffering from being so well known (the food was a little bland). Last time I went it had kicked it up a notch again, thank goodness. It has recently been put on the National Register of Historic Places.
The woodpecker looks to be a Hairy Woodpecker (Leuconotopicus villosus) but I could be wrong. I’m not sure of their range. They are basically the larger version of a downy woodpecker.
What a perfect place to live: tasty food, nice animals AND fossils!!!! Sounds heavenly. I need to get to New Mexico, I’m told the photography opportunities there abound!
Diana, if you every actually get here, let’s hook up; I can show you a lot of great places.
Quarai, where Jerry visited with us when he was here (presumably there will be pix at some point), is on the migratory route for several bird species. In the spring and fall, we get birders here from all over the place.
Quarai is only three miles from here, so we get some of the birds stopping at our feeders, too. L
I will for sure!
Birds? I’m coming too! 😀
WEIT gathering in New Mexico? Count me in, if all y’all’ll have me….
b&
birds, flowers, red rock, NM food, me, too;-)
If you’ve got space left on that bus…looks like a quorum.
Sweet!
Love the y’all’ll…you could almost yodel that!
Linda- I would love to come meet your goats!!!
The phylum Gnetophyta has been demoted by some authorities to an order, the Gnetales and nested within the phylum Coniferophyta, which includes the pines and other traditional cone-bearing plants (but not cycads, which also have cones). The Gnetales are an interesting and geographically disparate group, with living representatives limited to three genera, Ephedra in the southwest area of North America, Welwitschia in Africa and Gnetum in northern South America, Africa and southeast Asia.
There was a very curious recent article about the unique moonlight pollination mechanism of an Ephedra species:
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/11/4/20140993
This report seems to say insect pollination evolved before wind pollination. My first thought was, wind born pollen seems more “primitive” and should have come first.
Wow, that is fascinating!
Actually, I was mistaken about the geographic distribution of Ephedra, it’s a bit more widespread than I stated above.
I should know what the red bell-like flowers are called; they’re all over southern Utah.
The other red ones might be Indian or desert paintbrush?
Indian paintbrush.
I think the upper picture of red flowers is Indian paint brush, but the lower one, below the purple flowers, is something else whose name is on the tip of my tongue??? Must research..
Penstemon, perhaps?
And the other one is scarlet gilia.
That’s it, Frank. Thanks! Or skyrocket. It’s a kind of phlox.
I love this post, both pics and commentary. But I’m saddened that you had the opportunity to show brachiopods and instead chose an ordinary ammonite. 🙂
I grew up near las Cruces. Beautiful place. Amazing food. Cannot wait to get back to White Sands.
Can the kittens be renewed after 15 minutes?
You might be able to take out a different kitten. They don’t want to a. freak out the kittens and b. prevent workers from doing their job entirely (which would be what would happen to me if I could have a kitten in my office).
LOL – yup, it’d be kittens all the way down – and up and across- if I had that opportunity to bring kittens to “work”.
Some plant IDs & whatnot:
The Ephedra is Ephedra trifurca. Where exactly Ephedra and the other gnetophytes are placed within the gymnosperms is still uncertain, but molecular phylogenetic studies clearly place them within the gymnosperm clade and most likely closely related to pines–no closer to the angiosperms than are pines, junipers, cycads, ginkgo, etc. Morphological resemblances to angiosperms appear to be convergent.
The cacti following the Ephedra are: Echinocereus coccineus, Opuntia macrocentra, and Ferocactus wislizeni. The grey shrubs next to the first two are Krameria erecta.
The montane wildflowers are, in order: Allium cernuum, Cirsium inornatum (with grasshopper & butterfly), Hymenoxys hoopesii, Achillea millefolium, Castilleja wootonii (I think; I am not good with Castilleja), Penstemon neomexicanus, and Ipomopsis aggregata.
For what it’s worth, you can buy sotol (the beverage) in Las Cruces. I enjoy the flavor, but do not react well to Agave- or Dasylirion-based liquors and rarely drink them.
If you get a chance, take a detour to Hatch, home of the most-publicized NM chiles. Hint on where to eat: watch for Hispanic guys in dusty boots.
Ah! Regional foods! Wonderful. And I’ve never been to NM, so I didn’t know what to expect. And the local wildlife has the same benefit – the same and different.
Jerry left out pictures of the soak in the hot tub. This is fine!
LOL!
But now you’ve let the cat out of the bag…