Susan J. Tweit is a scientist who evolved into an award-winning writer and radio commentator. She is the author of five books for adults, including Barren, Wild, & Worthless: Living in the Chihuahuan Desert, personal stories about the history and natural history of Southern New Mexico, The Great Southwest Nature Factbook, a browser's guide to nature in the Southwest, from A to Z, and Seasons in the Desert: A Naturalist's Notebook, from Chronicle books. She has also written two children's books, Meet the Wild Southwest: Land of Hoodoos & Gila Monsters (Alaska Northwest Books) and City Foxes, a picture book which was named one of the Outstanding Science Books for Children for 1998.
Her "Wild Lives" radio commentaries are heard three times weekly on KRWG-FM, Southern New Mexico public radio, and her columns run in the Las Cruces Sun News. Susan's essays and stories have appeared in Harrowsmith Country Life, New Mexico, Sierra, Cricket, Bloomsbury Review, and other magazines. She is the co-founder of Las Cruces' wildly popular - and fun - Border Book Festival. She is currently living in Colorado with her husband, Richard Cabe, and dog, Perdida Imelda.
Susan is a popular public speaker and leader of workshops. Her stories of our natural and human history have captivated a wide variety of audiences, including school classes, workshops, banquets, and professional meetings. As Bloomsbury Review put it, she brings the precision of a scientist and the passion of a poet, and is able to refocus readers' vision and ignite their imaginations.
Susan has a new web site! She invites you to come visit. Her books are available there, at local bookstores, or on-line through http://BarnesandNoble.com and http://Amazon.com (search by author for Susan Tweit).
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Soaptree yucca is an interesting plant in all seasons. But its flowers are truly spectacular. In late spring and early summer, soaptree yucca sprouts flower stalks up to ten feet tall, laden with clusters of waxy, ivory-colored, bell-shaped blossoms. On moonlit nights, the tall, glowing columns inspire another common name: "Our Lord's Candles."
Soaptree yucca flowers exude a subtle fragrance that attracts nighttime nectar feeders like bats and moths. But like all yucca species, soaptree yucca depends on just one particular pollinator, a yucca moth. The relationship is so specific that different species of yucca moths pollinate different species of yucca. And each depends on the other: The small, night-flying moths cross-pollinate the flowers, ensuring yucca reproduction; the developing yucca fruit, in turn, nourishes the growing moth larvae. Female yucca moths fly from flower to flower, gathering pollen from one flower, shaping it into a ball, then flying to another flower. They stuff the pollen ball into the second flower and deposit their eggs in its ovary. The growing moth larvae feed on the fruit and seeds, leaving sufficient seeds to produce new yucca plants.
Yucca has long been useful to Southwesterners. People split and chewed the fibrous leaves to make rope, matting, sandals, baskets, and cloth. The leaves also thatched house roofs and shade ramadas. The succulent buds and young flower stalks were prized as a vegetable, and the ripe fruits roasted and dried. The name "soaptree yucca" refers to the gentle soap obtained from the pounded or boiled roots of all yuccas.
Most yucca leaves are stiff, quite waxy, and end in a stout spine, repelling all but the most determined grazers. But soaptree yucca leaves are slender and comparatively flexible. Woodrats relish them. They shear the leaves off at the base, leaving the yucca looking like it has received a buzz cut, then tote the leaves off for food and nest-building material. Cattle, deer, pronghorn, and other grazers nibble on soaptree yucca leaves and search out the succulent young flower stalks. Birds like orioles and cactus wrens hide their nests deep in the protected heart of the dense leaf rosettes. Where trees or utility poles are lacking, tall yucca stalks provide perches for shrikes and hawks.
If you travel across Southern New Mexicos grasslands in late spring or early summer, you can't miss soaptree yucca and its towering ivory "candles." But to really appreciate our state flower, visit the yucca forests on a moonlit night, when the blossoms glow and softly scent the air.