General Information

Physical Description:  Usually multi-trunked, small tree with rounded crown of light green leaves, yellowing in fall. Creamy-white, very showy, fragrant flowers appear in graceful drooping clusters followed by typical winged seeds.

Care and Maintenance:  Some pruning may be required to ensure good tree form.

Gardener’s Notes:  The only ash tree with conspicuous flowers. Excellent drought tolerant small tree. Limited but deep irrigation in hot months will be rewarded with full foliage and flowering. Native from west Texas, across New Mexico to Arizona and into Mexico.

Plant information from Southwest Yard & Garden Plant Advisor.

General Information

Physical Description: Fast growing, very large shade tree with an open, broad-spreading crown from a massive trunk and limbs with deeply furrowed, corky gray bark. Waxy, light green, spade-shaped leaves turn bright golden yellow in fall. Male trees have dark red catkins in late spring. females produce capsules full of cottony seeds that drift upon the breeze.

Care and Maintenance: High maintenance tree outside of its natural habitat. Leaf and twig litter. Allergenic pollen and flammable accumulations of cottony seed fluff. Susceptible to cotton root rot, iron chlorosis, mistletoe, wetwood, fall webworm, leaf miners, leaf and stem galls, wood borers, leaf rust, leaf beetles, dothichiza, phomopsis, septoria cankers and probably the common cold. The wood is weak and brittle and sudden limb breakage from winds or other stress can severely damage any nearby structures.

Gardener’s Notes: Although majestic in stature and beautiful in golden fall foliage, Cottonwoods need deep rich soils and frequent deep irrigation to stay healthy. Native to the flood plains of the Rio Grande including El Paso and other riparian areas of the northern Chihuahuan Desert and extends into Utah and Colorado. See also entry for P. fremontii (Arizona cottonwood), which replaces this one to the south and west. Not a tree for the average residential landscape.

Plant information from Southwest Yard & Garden Plant Advisor.

General Information

 Physical Description:  Small, well mannered, shade tolerant plant with eye catching spikes of 1″, scarlet-red, tubular summer flowers among clumps of deep green, round, scalloped leaves.

Care and Maintenance:  Needs deadheading and small but regular amounts of water to maintain blooming. Prune to basal rosette in winter. Short lived.

Gardener’s Notes:  This Central Texas native grows naturally under shady junipers and oaks. Salvia coccinea is a similar, herbaceous, tropical species locally available as an annual bedding plant. It is not normally winter hardy but reseeds well. Both attract hummingbirds.

Ed note:  When searching for both low water needs and shade – this is the ONLY plant that comes up on the NMSU reference tool.

Plant information from Southwest Yard & Garden Plant Advisor.

General Information

Physical Description:  Multiple stiff, erect, bamboo-like stems encircled at the top by attractive sprays of colorful leaves, bronze-red when new, turning to summer green and fading to purples and crimson in winter. White flowers in loose clusters in spring become bright red-orange fruit by fall and persist to enhance the winter landscape.

Care and Maintenance:  Prefers light shade.

Gardener’s Notes:  Many cultivars of this Chinese ornamental available including compact and dwarf varieties. Definite Oriental quality. Excellent color accent.

Plant information from Southwest Yard & Garden Plant Advisor.

General Information

Physical Description:  Profuse lavender to purple 2″ ray flowers with yellow disk centers among finely dissected foliage. Blooms spring through summer.

Care and Maintenance:  Needs well drained soil. Prolific reseeder becoming invasive with excess water.

Gardener’s Notes:  Native to El Paso’s sand dune country. The attractive daisy-like flowers often appear on a succession of plants. To prolong the blooming season, remove spent plants to make way for new emerging replacements. M. canescens, Sand aster, is a more robust, larger leafed relative also found in sandy or rocky soils of El Paso with lovely purple flowers in the fall.

Plant information from Southwest Yard & Garden Plant Advisor.

General Information

Physical Description:  Densely foliaged, compact, rounded shrub with soft velvety, silver-gray leaves and stems, and intense deep blue-violet flowers following heavy rains from late spring to fall. Very drought tolerant.

Care and Maintenance:  Overwatering and/or poor drainage will quickly kill this plant.

Gardener’s Notes:  Naturally tidy and compact in full sun. Chihuahuan desert native with several cultivars released by Texas A&M including “Silver Cloud” and “Thunder Cloud”. Similar El Paso area native, L. minus, is seldom commercially available but a hybrid with L. frutescens, “Rain Cloud” can be found commercially.

Plant information from Southwest Yard & Garden Plant Advisor.