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Author: Subject: Behold the boojum, not a hairy carrot at all!
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[*] posted on 7-1-2006 at 12:55 PM
Behold the boojum, not a hairy carrot at all!

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/128906

By George L. Mountainlion
05.15.2006

As you know, my name is George L. Mountainlion. In my opinion it is quite a solid and dignified name. It even has a middle initial (L. stands for Leo, a rather famous name associated with lions).

But the other day on one of my walks around the museum grounds I stopped to study a small group of bizarre plants with a name even more unusual than the plants' appearances. They are called boojums. This, it appears to me, is a rather frivolous name, unlike my no-nonsense George L.!

I traveled over to the botany department and asked questions about these weird plants and their weirder name. I learned that boojums are close relatives of the ocotillo plants we commonly see in our part of the Sonoran Desert. Boojums resemble huge, upside-down, hairy carrots. Their body normally consists of a single, grayish-green trunk, which may be up to 60 or more feet in height. The tallest recorded one reached 81 feet. The plant has a woody skeleton and stores moisture in the trunk's tissue.

In its upper section the boojum's trunk occasionally may produce one to several major limbs. All along the trunk and limbs, if present, short, slender, heavily spined branches radiate horizontally. When moisture is available small leaves appear the length of the short branches; the plant is usually leafless in summer.

Stands of boojums look like an imaginary wizard's garden, for if the main trunk does branch near the top, these limbs often twist in grotesque shapes. Sometimes the main trunk will begin to bend over. The tip will reach the ground and grow along it, producing a gigantic arch.

If some groups of boojums bring wizards to mind, one of the large boojums on our grounds must resemble a witch's hairdo. On this plant the many straight, normally horizontal branches are unusually long and twisting and curling in on one another.

Clusters of small, white, fragrant flowers are borne at the tops of the trunk and any limbs from July to September and are pollinated primarily by insects.

Boojums are found solely in the Sonoran Desert and only in limited portions of it. The major stands are in west-central Baja California where the desert climate is influenced by moist winds off the Pacific Ocean. Across the Gulf of California from the Baja population, a smaller stand of boojums grows along the Gulf coast in Sonora. There an upwelling of cold water near the shore produces a similar survival advantage for the boojums.
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