Honey Mesquite
Mesquite. It’s all over the plains where I live. Matt thinks they’re ugly little bushes. I think they’re beautiful. They grow with very little water. They withstand the harsh winds and dust storms of the High Plains. When they are small, they have little thorns on their green trunks. When they are big, their greyish trunks have become thornless but twisted. Throughout their lives, they are never lush, but always have sparse feathery leaves.
Farmers and ranchers of the area hated them because they grew up everywhere, like weeds. Cows supposedly ate the seed pods along with the leaves and distributed the mesquite across the plains wherever they roamed. Mesquite was chopped and used only as firewood for smoking, and people found they made excellent-tasting barbeque.
However, at Mission San Jose in San Antonio, I learned that honey mesquite pods are actually edible. If you find a dried yellow seed pod, bite it. It’s honey-like, and full of protein. Native Americans ground the seed pods into flour. I personally think honey mesquite pancakes sound pretty darn good.
My mom and I were impressed by this one mesquite tree. Decades of lightning strikes and harsh weather had split its trunk, but it kept growing. A tribute to the sturdy mesquite. I like ‘em.
