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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
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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.”
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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
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9-26-iie
flowing again when mesquite was
removed from the area. That may
be a tall Texas tale, but certainly is
true in theory, experts agree.
Mesquite’s extensive root
system makes it difficult to kill. “If
you spray the trees with
chemicals, they will be just as bad
again in five or six years,” Rogers
of the Texas Forest Service says.
One effective method is pulling
them up by the roots, or at least
cutting them off about a foot below
the surface.
The success of mesquite for
cooking-it is a dense wood
producing an extremely hot fire
that sears in flavor-has sparked a
search for additional modem uses,
Rogers says.
Already the wood is being made
into parquet flooring, furniture,
gunstocks, and decorative wood
carvings. It has a limited market
as lumber because the trees grow
crooked and only the largest
produce long, straight boards.
Shoo
Drat
the gnat'
He had the whole sky
in which to fly,
but the place he chose
was in front of my nose
DRAT!
Why didn’t
he fly
over my head,
.behind my back,
anywhere instead
of that small space
in front of my face?
DRAT'
\W/ *£ l( 3
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New Markets
Sought
Maiyaret Barrou
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