c t I 1 810-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, August 31,1985 Mesquite WASHINGTON - For more than a century, mesquite, the wood that helped support the Alamo, has been cursed, kicked, kerosened, chain-sawed, and bulldozed as a pest in the Southwest. It’s almost impossible to get rid of, experts say of the tough, gnarled tree with roots so deep and wide that it thrives-even can produce bumper crops-during droughts. Varieties of the thorny menace have invaded 55 million acres in Texas alone, growing so thick in places that they choke and rob once-prime range land. In New Mexico and Arizona, another 45 million acres have been infested. For nearly 40 years, the Texas Forest Service has tried to make something of the “good-for nothing” tree. “It’s called turning a problem into a resource,” says Ken Rogers of the Service’s Forest Products Laboratory. All Shapes And Sizes Finally in the 1980 s, mesquite has caught fire. Chunks of it, chips of it, logs of it, and charcoal briquets of it are burning in backyard barbecures and restaurant grills across the country. A new restaurant on the Potomac river near the nation’s capital features mesquite-fired steaks and seafood. There’s even a “friends of mesquite" association, Los Amigos del Mesquite, whose 300 members are producers and consumers. Although the wood can be used for everything from parquet floors to gunstocks, 90 percent of the nationwide mesquite business today goes up in smoke as cooking fuel, says Rogers. Sales are ex pected to top $l2 million this year. Mesquite competes with another aromatic wood, hickory, for a w BLACK REP isuow BLUE BROWN CLOWNS - A C/RCUS/SNJ R CIRCUS UJfTNOUTTHE BNTICS OF7HE CLOU)NSmO GO THROUGH ALL THE/P LAUGH PROLONG ROUTINES 70 AMUSE THE AUDIENCE. SOME CtOUJNSMARE THEM SELUES APPEAR ENORMOUS BY NEARING CUSTOMS U/H/CH ARE 3LOUJNUP UHTH AIR AND THEN POP LIKE A BALLOON WHEN THEY ARE PUNCTUREO. A pest with good taste distinctive smoky flavoring. “We used to go out and chop our own mesquite from trees outside Dallas and take it on camping trips for cookouts. We thought, if we like its mellow flavor so much, others probably would too,” says Rozan Reed Williams of Dallas. “We pioneered the mesquite-chunks business.” She and her husband, Ray, operate one of the largest mesquite companies, producing three-pound bags of chunks in two seconds, and shipping them as far as Saudi Arabia. What’s good for gourmets may be good for cattle ranchers, who welcome harvesters of their nuisance trees. The Williamses’ company leases more than 800,000 acres of honey mesquite, one of the three major varieties among some 40 species. Ironically, the cattle drives of Spittle Bug He lives inside a house of foam Beneath a frothv bubbly dome And you go by and say “snake spit 1 " And never know what’s inside it Well hidden there from preying eyes A tiny, living, green surprise When 1 go by a plant or grass And see that white and tell tale mass 1 push aside the bubbly foam And look to see if he’s at home It causes him just minor troubles To blow again his house of bubbles ORAM6E 6REEKI PEACH LT. BLUE LT GREEN the Old West spread the mesquite menace. The cattle ate its nutritious pods and deposited them onto the soil in dung left along the trails. Mesquite was spreading like wildfire by the mid-1800s as overgrazing of ranch lands gob bled up any plant competitors. Daily Bread And Diapers Mesquite was not always maligned, says biogeographer James Humphries of East Texas State University, who has studied the changing perceptions of the indigenous tree. Not only was mesquite used for cross-timbers in the Alamo and the first fence posts on early ranches, but it provided “40 percent of the diet of most native Americans in the Southwest,” Humphries says. “It went from most-favored food source to the status of pest.” Wuigt* Arms bj I ”T ■ 0 a v 4^s, W^lg s ■S" -V*s *- - ‘ -V^ V ' The Indians used virtually the whole tree, he explains. They made a sweet drink and breadlike substance from the pods, dried food from the seeds, which were 40 percent protein, antiseptics from the sap, needles and toothpicks from the thorns, and baby diapers from the bark, pounding it into a felt-like material. Like outdoor chefs today, they cooked with the wood. “Mesquite was dependable. The people could always count on it regardless of climatic conditions, because drought has little effect on it,” Humphries explains. The tree’s remarkable roots can reach down 40 to 50 feet or more, all the way to the water table, and can spread out at least 50 feet. A competitor for scarce water in the Southwest, a large, mature mesquite tree, usually only about 20 feet tall, can drink up enough to supply about a half-acre of grassland. In some places, it is ■' ’ dry creeks have started -. 7V V v, •* U 4// \ l/