Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey

Series produced by KXCI

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Petey Mesquitey is KXCI’s resident storyteller.

Every week since the spring of 1992 Petey has delighted KXCI listeners with slide shows and poems, stories and songs about flora, fauna, family and the glory of living in southern Arizona.


211 Pieces

Order by: Newest First | Oldest First
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I grew up in the land of the black walnut, Juglans nigra. And if you grew up in the eastern US, then you did too. It has a very large range in east...

  • Added: Aug 12, 2022
  • Length: 03:59
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This is the time of year when you see desert millipedes out and about on muggy overcast days. Sometimes even crossing the two lane blacktop roads n...

  • Added: Aug 12, 2022
  • Length: 04:03
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I’m pretty sure I first encountered the plant called mala mujer in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson around 30 years ago. I had 10 years of ...

  • Added: Aug 12, 2022
  • Length: 04:30
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At my age I should being thinking more of getting rid of clutter rather than adding to it. I like to tell our daughters Katy and Sarah that some da...

  • Added: Jul 19, 2022
  • Length: 04:23
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San Miguelito (Antigonon leptopus) is quite the Mexican native plant. I read that it’s found in habitat not only in Sonora and Chihuahua and southw...

  • Added: Jul 19, 2022
  • Length: 05:08
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This episode is a reminiscence…something I seem to be doing a lot of lately…and also a plea for getting our children and grandchildren out of doors...

  • Added: Jul 19, 2022
  • Length: 04:02
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I hope we all get all of our monsoon fixes this season. One of those for me and maybe you too will be toads calling from puddles.

  • Added: Jul 19, 2022
  • Length: 04:01
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I wrote this song about Lycium fremontii when I was managing the native plant nursery of Desert Survivors on West Starr Pass in Tucson. The nursery...

  • Added: Jun 23, 2022
  • Length: 05:01
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I’ve told the story of the yucca moths and the soaptree yuccas many times. I love to tell it when I give talks and I’m not making this up, many yea...

  • Added: Jun 23, 2022
  • Length: 04:06
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Every time I pull a reference book or field guide off the shelf to read about a recently seen insect I seem to run across a quote by the famous ent...

  • Added: Jun 23, 2022
  • Length: 05:09
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I pursued the Mexican stoneroller ( Campostoma ornatum) for a few minutes trying to get a photo or two before deciding to quit harassing the fish i...

  • Added: Jun 23, 2022
  • Length: 04:19
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I forgot to say that false solomon’s seal was formerly in the family Liliaceae, but is now in Asparagaceae. There are 2 subspecies of Maianthemum r...

  • Added: May 24, 2022
  • Length: 04:09
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There are 30 species of Dalea found in Arizona, many of which are in the nursery trade because they are so doggone pretty. How cool is that? Very. ...

  • Added: May 19, 2022
  • Length: 04:20
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The genus Artemisia is in the sunflower family Asteraceae and there are over 200 species found around the world in the northern hemisphere. Well, t...

  • Added: May 19, 2022
  • Length: 05:05
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I started my nursery/horticulture career in the spring of 1980 at Desert Trees Nursery northwest of Tucson. It was and still is a wholesale nursery...

  • Added: May 04, 2022
  • Length: 04:16
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The riparian woodland Ms. Mesquitey and I were hiking in is at around 6,000 ft. in elevation. I think that may be the upper limits of the elf owls'...

  • Added: May 04, 2022
  • Length: 04:33
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Tecoma stans angustata is in the Bignonia family Bignoniaceae and there are a bunch of species of Tecoma starting here in the borderlands with our ...

  • Added: May 04, 2022
  • Length: 04:51
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Some personal history in poem and song. The photos are mine…well, I dug them out of the archives. That’s the very beginning of the Dusty Chaps in 1...

  • Added: May 04, 2022
  • Length: 04:17
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Our one flowering wildflower on this wonderful day was the very pretty perennial called penny cress or candy tufts. It is the former Thlaspi fendl...

  • Added: May 04, 2022
  • Length: 04:36
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There are 2 species of walnuts here in the borderlands of southern Arizona; the Arizona walnut (Juglans major) that I talked about and a species ca...

  • Added: May 04, 2022
  • Length: 04:34