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• 30 Minutes- Tucson Youth Poetry Slam
• Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey: Xylocopa in the Garden
• Flicks - Monsieur Lazhar

Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey- Ziziphus It is a bird plant extraordinaire. Any native with complex branching, lots of spines or thorns and fruit too; well, that's a bird plant! by Petey Mesquitey The genus alone is very cool to say and our native Ziziphus (sometimes written Zizyphus) as the neat specific epithet, obtusifolia. The whole name is a mouthful. Use Gray Thorn if you prefer. It is a bird plant extraordinaire. Any native with complex branching, lots of spines or thorns and fruit too; well, that's a bird plant!

If you live in Tucson it's not hard to find Chinese Jujube growing in older neighborhoods, especially in front of an old Chinese grocery store. Think of it as part a cultural exchange. It's a very hardy plant, growing out of sidewalks or beside the road, taking drought, heat and cold, There is a thicket of Chinese Jujube along the interstate in Benson, very close to it's Arizona kin Gray Thorn.

Petey Mesquitey is KXCI's resident storyteller. Since 1992 Petey has delighted KXCI listeners with slide shows and poems, stories and songs about flora, fauna, family and the glory of living in southern Arizona.

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