Edited 2024-02-13 21:20:43
Re: Monday-Answer
Mesquite. (Prosopis). Dale stuck with it. The common barbeque and pen making favorite. The wood is hard and dense. It burns extremely hot (17000 BTU/kg) and is mostly smokeless but still imparts flavor. This is a tree with the deepest tap root of all trees, over 100 feet below the surface. It thrives in dry locations owing mostly to its below surface roots which are so prolific that it starves out other plants. Its trunk thickness below ground may be twice or more the size of that above. In soil with moisture it grows wickedly. Septic systems are a favorite target for mesquite and if situated around a pond can grow so thick it effectively shuts out larger animals like sheep and cattle from getting to the water. Mesquite is a legume so it produces seeds in pods which have been a food and medicine (flour, poultices for skin, ulcers) for people and animals for thousands of years, but eating too many can poison cattle. Mesquite seeds are so hard that they will break a pepper mill. Because they are so hard they may pass unbroken through animals only to be deposited some distance from the mother tree in the perfect medium for growth, where they sink deep roots and eventually block established paths and trails. If the seed is cracked and moist it can germinate in six hours. If it doesn't grow right away it can be dormant for decades with no harm as it is little affected by most temperatures present on earth. It grows by seed only --5 to 20 seeds per pod. The plant has a life of between 30 and 100 years. It is very resistant to fire (in fact fire stimulates new growth and cracks open seeds), plowing, insects, chaining, dozing. Attempting to clear a Mesquite tree has pulled more than one rear end out of a truck. Cutting stumps flat with a chemical paste on the stump surface is effective for killing the plant but plant killing chemicals left served on a table and around water holes is not good for animals and even that requires follow up applications and the root still makes clearing difficult. In addition a mature plant has thousands of thick 3" thorns that destroy the soft tissue of a mouth and easily puncture an off road tire. When goats were brought in in Australia to kill off the bushy tree they would stand on their hind legs to get to the leaves. The thorns would skewer the mouth and underbelly and either kill directly or cause wounds which led to parasites and nasty infection. Losses were so heavy on the goats that the practice was stopped. Australia is the primary country with eradication programs, but most eastern countries with arid locations have included the mesquite tree on their noxious plant lists.
