The wild mesquite is a crop plant of great promise if scientifically used and improved. It covers a wide territory and grows under very adverse conditions and in the unimproved state contains many good productive specimens.
THE NATURAL HABITAT OF THE MESQUITES
Robert C. Forbes, Director of Arizona Agricultural Experiment Station, says,[1] "The mesquite tree (prosopis juliflora), known in some localities as the algaroba, honey locust, or honey pod is found,[2] roughly speaking, from the Colorado and Brazos Rivers in Texas, on the east, to the western edge of the Colorado desert in California on the west, and from the northern boundaries of Arizona and New Mexico southward as far as Chile and the Argentine Republic."
The plant endures in all kinds of soil except that which is wet, resists great drought by means of small water consumption and a root system of great depth. Roots fifty and even eighty feet long have been credibly reported.[3]
- ↑ Bulletin 13, Arizona Station.
- ↑ The American Naturalist, Vol. XVIII. May 1884, "The Mesquite," by Dr. V. Havard. U. S. Army: "It flourishes in the southwestern territory of the United States, especially in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, being by far the most common tree or shrub of the immense desert tracts drained by the Rio Grande, Gila, and Lower Colorado."
- ↑ University of Arizona, Agricultural Experiment Station, Tucson, Arizona, letter, October 22, 1913, from Robert H. Forbes, Director.
"Although mesquite grows abundantly in regions of the lowest rainfall, it is found for the most part in the washes, where occasional flood waters undoubtedly penetrate to considerable depths and thus afford a water supply far in excess of that which would be available on elevations. Standing on a mountainside and looking off across the country, one can easily trace the drainage by the long lines of dusty green mesquite which thus occupy the drainage lines.
"The mesquite, as well as some other desert plants that I have observed, has two distinct root systems—one spreading laterally in every direction from the tree and evidently availing itself of the occasional supplies of moisture coming from heavy penetrating rains, and the other striking straight down to great depths and, presumably, feeding upon deep ground water supplies. I once, personally, dug up a lateral root running along a ditch, which at rare intervals carried flood water, a distance of exactly fifty feet from the trunk of the tree. This root was not as large as my
