Benito Trevino Interview, Part 1 of 2

  • DT: My name is David Todd. I am here for the Conservation History Association of Texas and here is a beautiful part of the South Texas brush North of Rio Grande City and it is March 1, 2000 and we have the good fortune to be visiting with
  • Benito Trevino who is a ethnobotanist and operates a nursery here and has been involved in trying to promote the understanding and protection of native plants in South Texas. And I wanted to thank you for spending some time with me.
  • BT: Thank you.
  • DT: We often start some of these interviews by talking a little bit about what might have been your early roots of interests and exposure to being concerned about the outdoors and its protection.
  • Maybe you could tell a little about that if your parents, cousins, friends, teachers that had...
  • BT: It's a, you know, its one of those things that it's kind of hard to figure out.
  • I came from a family of thirteen and it's strange, you know, that even though there were so many of us and we lived in a two room house there was enough time forfor each one of us to develop our own interests separate from the whole.
  • And I can think back when I was a youngster, you know, 5, 6, 7 years old that I always had a lot of interest in what was around us and we really didn't have hardly any toys or bicycles or none of the typical things that somebody my age might have in other areas.
  • So it would be making observations on grasshoppers or birds feeding, you know, the mama feeding the babies or a looking at a plant bloom, you know, thosethose little things.
  • And my family, we were so large, and this area, the conditions here are pretty harsh. There really isn't much work. I come from a migrant worker family background and we would migrate all the time.
  • And I'd spend almost a 100% of the working time in the fields and it was plants. And somehow being associated with plants in mywhen I was trying to entertain myself and then when I was working, I started developing an interest ononon plants themthemselves not necessarily native.
  • And I recall as a child that my mother would say Benito your little daughter doesn't, I mean, your sister doesn't feel well, could you go to the river and get me the outer bark a WillowWillow Tree and then on the way back get me the inner bark of a mesquite tree and then get me some cactus root.
  • And I would go. You know, II knew the plants that were all around us so I would take one of my brothers or sisters and we would go and take a machete or an ax and we'd collect the ingredients and we would give them to her and then we'd go on our way.
  • And this happened a lot throughout my growing times. And then when I became an adult I was wondering, you know, I wonder what mother was doing with all of these things, cause I know all the collections of individual things but I really don't understand what she was using them for.
  • And its whenwhen I studied at UT Austin, it was the morphology of plants so it was like the nervous system, the transportation system, how plants transport minerals and stuff. And that was pretty fascinating but I couldn't make a connection with my background.
  • But I have the technical knowledge now and after graduating I returned and I spent the great deal of my adult life making those connections.
  • What my mother was doing, even though she only went through 11th grade in school, she was like a pH chemist and she was taking salicylic acid from the Salix Nigra or the River Willow and then she was taking the bark of the mesquite as a flavoring agent and then she was taking the root of the cactus as a buffer.
  • So she was making bufferina buffered aspirin from all of these things. And it'sthen became fascinating to me as to how can my mother, way out there in the woods where, I mean, she really doesn't read that many books and stuff, how can she, I mean, how did she learn all these little things.
  • If we hadif we hurt ourselves real bad, there was plants that she could use. Andand now, you know, after I could now do research, what does that plant have thatdoes it have an anti-inflammatory agent or actually how mechanisms does it use?
  • And it's amazing to me to find out that maybe they learned by trial and error and the information kept on going from generation to generation because there were very specific plants used for very specific things and they all worked and it made sense.
  • If you were to use that plant for another ailment, it wouldn't work and its just fascinating to me so II still, every moment that I have and I find a senior person, you know, in their 80's or 90's that's still around,
  • I just try to extract that information from them because the information itself, a lot of the stuff that I have researched, its not there. You know, it'sit'sit's handed down and itit has stayed that way so...
  • DT: Could you tell about some of these visits with older people and trying to find out what they have learned?
  • BT: Therethere were at least one person that I believe, he was a he washe was born in 1900. And I believe that he was one of the last of the like as close as we can get to an American Indian from thisfrom this area.
  • And to watch his family group travel as a family group, it was the mother, the daughters, the sons. They would always go as a little group.
  • They depended largelythey were very, very, very poor, so they depended largely onon the native brush and I would find it fascinating to go with them and ask them, whatwhat would I do if a if, lets say, you know, I didn't have a toothbrush and II had a gum infection?
  • And he would say, oh well there is a remedy to that. And I would say, well what's the name of the plant. And he would say, you know, like borago, the Spanish name for leather stamp, and I knew the plant but II really didn't have much a knowledge of the use.
  • And then he would say, and I would say, what part do you eat, and oftentimes he would laugh like you don't eat it dummy. He said, no let me show you, and he would dig up the root and then he would cut it up into pieces and then he would show me how it was used.
  • So, you know, even though my parents knew a lot, my grandfather on my father's side was aa wagon train master and they dealt more with ranching.
  • My father on my mother's side was more of a farmer and this man, so they knew, you know, basic stuff but this guy, this family lived pretty much in the woods. He was athey herded goats. He was a goat herder.
  • So his knowledge even went further, you know, it had other uses that maybe a ranching or a farming family wouldn't have. So those were particular moments.
  • There's a plant that's called Epona inin Spanish that I yet been able to a cross-reference the Spanish name with the scientific name so I can so, you know, so Iso I know it scientifically. And that particular plant isis still used today as a remedy for urinarurinary tract.
  • If you are unable to urinate the way we used to when we were young, you would cut it up and make a tea. And my parents didn't know about it and when they learned about it, you know, many years before I learned about it, they learned it fromfrom this man who has an extensive knowledge of plants.
  • It was very fascinating to a visit with them and, you know, justjust go out in the woods and find things from him thatthat he still knew and, course, he died several years ago and another encyclopedia of information just kind of gone down the drain. (misc.)
  • DT: I am curious if there were other chances that you might have learned about the uses of these wild plants in your formal education at University of Texas in botany or once you got involved as a petrochemical chemist in your work.
  • BT: Well, you know, it's amazing to me that a so little of the medicinal aspect of native plants was ever taught in any of the classes that I took.
  • I learned a little bit about the edible plants, some aquatic stuff that's a edible but very, very littleand that's one of the problems that I see withwith people that get a formal education, you know, be it in botany or biology or any or the other sciences.
  • That its moremore of a pure science and when I became educated, I learned things that I didn't know before but I couldn't make a connection back to the things that Ithat I had, you know, I was coming in contact with when I was growing up be it the use of medicinal plants or the poisonous plants that we have in the area.
  • Plants that were used for fiber, you know, toto survive. These were the tools that people needed and I guess because were so far advanced that maybe they're more important things thanthat they need to teach other than, you know, how to survive, you know, like how to survive in the brush country well, you know, who is going to use that information?
  • But, to me, that information, even today, applies to the people that live here. I can recall many, many instances where there would be absolutely nothing to eat in our home that, you know, you could go to the store and buy.
  • And my mother would all of a sudden say, you know, we need to do something. We don't have any money, we don't have any food. Get that five-gallon bucket, and get that stick, and get that knife and let's go out to the woods.
  • In a couple of hours wed have a feast. You know, we'd havewe'd have fruits, we'd have greens we had, you know, we'd gather roots and leafy stuff.
  • And she could actually use some of the ingredients that she would use to cook a typical Mexican meal but we weren't having a typical Mexican meal, but she would use the spices and stuff and it was great.
  • You know, and those were the things thatthat I think in a formal a setting those are missed. You know, they just don't even a address those things which are still I think pretty important.
  • DT: I understand that after you worked in the oil industry you managed to return to your roots north of Rio Grande City and actually purchase a tract that had many of these plants that your mother had harvested over the years and also had a history with your family, many, many generations back. Can you tell how that happened?
  • BT: It was always our intention including my wife which was very supportive a toto return and basically we wanted to have some kind of impact inin South Texas. We didn't know what.
  • But we wanted toto have an impact, not just be somewhere and live and have a job, but actually to touch somebody. You know, to get thingspeople thinking about whatever we decided to do.
  • So whenwhen I was finally to a point where we were making money, both my wife and I, we said, you know, we're really making real good money and were kind of like on high lane and we're doing everything that everybody's doing that's like our age but that's not where our heart is.
  • We need to forget the job, forget the money and go back and do the things that we want to do. Even though we lose the income and the travel and the adventure and all those kinds of things.
  • So, as soon as we moved to Alaska and we making substantial amount of money we seriously decided, you know, we need to set up a budget and do the things we want to do to kind of get us started.
  • We were basically buy a small tract of wooded land, build a small home and somehow try and figure out how can we make a living off the land. And we worked for two years and we had sufficient money and then we returned and we were looking for a piece of property.
  • It took us almost a year and a half. We looked at hundreds of thousands of acres. We would go and just traverse throughthrough cow paths - and study what was there. And then we ran across this piece of property.
  • And I told my parents, you know, we found little piece of property kind of northwest of Starr County and I find it real fascinating. And he said, have you looked at the maps? The porcion maps? And I said, no.
  • The original Spanish Grants were 2 miles wide, 15 miles long. They were narrow and very long. There were something like 28,000 acres. And they were deeded to the early settlers. They had to make a living, most of them had cattle.
  • So they had to have sufficient land to raise cattle, raise horses. make a living. But by Spanish law, they couldn't take possession of water rights. So they're real long and skinny. And they all come to the river so everybody had water rights.
  • And this porcion belonged to my great, great ancestors. And whenwhen I found out that this piece of land thatthat I reallywe really liked because of the brush, it had several different ecological systems that I was interested in.
  • It had some plants that were, in my view, at the brink of becoming extinct or at least endangered and it also represented a portion of my background.
  • So we decided seriously to just disregard the rest and concentrate on this piece and after about a year of negotiating with the previous owner, we finally had it in our possession.
  • So it's kind of nice that we were able to retain something that is back 300 years historically had belonged to my family. So its a little extra bonus.
  • DT: Can you describe this tract and what makes it of interest to you?
  • BT: This tract is a very unique because it has about seven different soil types. And it is a perfect place that represents almost all South Texas except for maybe a beach or wetlands, in a small a piece of tract that you can get, I mean, almost all of it is here.
  • And one of the things that is very precious to me is what is called a Ramarrero. Ramarreros do not exist almost anywhere except in Starr County and maybe a little bit of Hidalgo County and that is it in the world.
  • It is a very, very unique ecological system composed of thorny brush, native plants, plants that you would never find here. You know, were seven or eight miles from the river and you would never find here species like a Sugar Hackberry or Anaqua, the ash, the cedar elm.
  • Those species are riparian types. You would find them alongalong the river, maybe on the side of a large lake. Here in this upland habitat conditions are very harsh. When it rains we have clay soils. The water just drains out and goes to the river.
  • If it rains three inches, were lucky we get inch and a half, two inch penetration into the soil.
  • Well, even here, eight miles from the river we find those species of aof a plants in this particular habitat which is called a Ramarrero, and it's the Spanish name for a branch is rama and Ramarrero kind of says that there's lots of branches.
  • And it's very, veryit's kind of like a thicket. Very dense. In fact when the Spaniards came here one of the reasons why they didn't settle a lot of this area is because there were the thorny brush and the Ramarreros. They couldn't penetrate them.
  • They were just so dense. And today that particular ecosystem is in danger, it's threatened because of clearing.
  • And there's one that goes right across this ranch so we were just, I mean, when I saw that ititit was almost like 50 acres of the ranch was traversed by Ramarrero along with the other things, some of the other plant species that were here, we decided this is it.
  • I mean, this is a little jewel that its almost extinct and someday I know it is going to happen sooner or later.
  • Our neighbors all around us will probably continue clearing and this will be like a little strip of the Ramarrero that goes back, you know, for long time and it'swe still have it. So we're hoping to preserve it.
  • We're still building on it. Some of the plant species thatthat have disappeared, you know, I have reforested and updated (A fly is bothering Benito. It is distracting him and they stop for about 10 seconds.)
  • DT: Can you talk about some of the other ecozones there?
  • BT: We have a very unique piece of land that you notice when you're coming into Starr County basically from almost any direction you are coming to flat land and then when you come into Starr County, you get little hills, hence the name of our ranch Rancho Lomitas means the ranch with hills.
  • And when we decided to give it a name, we wanted to give it a descriptive name of what this would represent and we have little hills.
  • These little hills werewere formed probably whenwhen the ocean was here and the river would bring in rocks fromfrom Colorado and from other states and had this depositions. Then later erosion occurred and it formed some of the Ramarreros and creeks.
  • And those little hills have like the cardinals, the Pyrrhuloxias, some of the real, real thorny brush that would not survive in areas that would be too wet or that the soil, even this clay soil, they wouldn't survive.
  • These little hills are composed mainly of a calcium carbonate or caliche, along with a little bit of sand or gravel. They're real well drained and the species of plants and animals that normally ininhabit these little areas are very unique.
  • So without the little type of environment you wouldn't have thatthat kind of, you know, thethe Cactus Wrens, the Thrashers, the kind of semi-desert type of birds and animals we find them here at the ranch because of those little hills.
  • Typical to South Texas, the thing that I envisioned whenwhen I was away and I would think about South Texas, I would think about Mesquite trees, Yuccas, Prickly Pear, the rest of thethis ranch is composed of that, the typical South Texas thorny brush which is basically Mesquite, Yuccas and the Prickly Pear Cactus.
  • So that composes aaa great portion of what South Texas was like before, I would say before the 40's, when they started clearing a lot of the land. So that's very, very special to me.
  • DT: Can you talk about some of the land uses that were here or...
  • BT: This particular ranch was pretty much just used for grazing. But when mywhen my grandparents, what I remember, they were basically cattle ranchers or they raised horses mainly. There was a little bit of farming usually donethey would plow with mules.
  • II remember many, many times watching mymy grandfather using a little plow with a blade that had to be replaced every two or three years cause he would just wear it out from furrowing so much land. Hardly any of it was irrigated.
  • The people would have one or two wells, water wells, in the area that would be not necessarily deep wells but they must have been some kind of underground system that they would always have water.
  • And I recall several times when I was young I would ask my grandparents, where are all the people coming from, you know, cause it was like mymymymymy grandparents and my aunts and uncles and us.
  • You know, we were just a very little community and that was our family and extended family.
  • And sometimes I would see so many people coming to my grandparents and I would see, you know, they would bring cattle and they would bring horses and well it was when they would have severe droughts and the wells that they would normally use to feed theirto water their stock and for their normal daily use would run dry.
  • And both my grandparents were lucky that they both had water wells that never went dry. So they would attractthey were like magnets. They would attract people fromfrom a very, very large area around where they would bring their animals.
  • The river between, I mean. before 1955 when Falcon dam was constructed, you would have floods and then you would have isolated pools of water and then it would be dry. Pretty much dry.
  • The water, when little pools would separate, it would stagnant and it wasn't suitable fornot even animals would drink out of it. So they woulddepended on these water wells. And I know both my grandparents wells, water wells, were very shallow.
  • I mean, they were maybe 20 feet deep. So, you know, those were veryvery neat memories that, kind of, I guess, helped shaped my way of thinking and, you know, kind of shaped me and who Iwho I grew up to be.
  • DT: You speak about some of the plants and live stock found around here. Can you also tell us of any wildlife that you've seen in this area?
  • BT: One of theone of the things that encouraged us not to do anyany clearing or anything, where the house is right now was already cleared by deer hunters they - when - they - when prior to us buying this ranch, it was a 338-acre tract and it was used for grazing cattle and leasing for deer hunters.
  • And they had cleared this area and when we decided to build we figured, you know, we don't want to disturb anymore. Well build rightit's already clear, well put it right here. So kind of like somebody, in the past, really established where we were going to put our house.
  • But we were encouraged that we did have a Ramarrero and that it is prime habitat not only for the monarch butterflies and a lot of the migrating butterflies.
  • For example, when the monarchs are moving South, when they come across the Ramarreros, they use them as freeways and if the Ramarrero didn't exist, the butterflies would probably not be able to continue their journey because this particular ecosystem has flowering plants, it has moisture, it has minerals that the monarchs require.
  • In the upland habitat the rest of the ranch doesn't have it. So when the monarchs finallywhen they are moving and they find the Ramarreros.
  • It's amazing to walk, you know, 100 acres and see four or five butterflies then go into the Ramarrero and see, you know, stand in any one spot and you might spot thirty, forty different kinds of butterflies right there.
  • Because this is real precious belt of land that eventually connects with other little parcels and makes it all the way to where they're going.
  • One year we had seen tracks that resembled a cat and we thought, you know, we do have a lot of bobcats so it could be bobcats. And then we sighted, or at least I sighted, an Ocelot and that made it worth saving, you know, this piece of land.
  • And it was about two years later, not on this ranch, but in an area real close where the Ramarreros still connect, I was walking along the roadside and II happened to glance on this little bluff that had little short grass, real thick vegetation.
  • There was a little opening and I just stood there and, you know, I was just looking at the little native grass and then I saw a little head pop out of the grass and I had my binoculars with me and I forfor a moment there I couldn'tI couldn't say if he was a dog or a cat and I said God what is that?
  • And I grabbed my binoculars and it was a Jaguarandi. And here'shere's the head that I was looking at and then a little head popped up on the side and a little head popped up on the side. It had two babies. And like wow, you know, thatthat really made my day.
  • To know that even though nobody has done any surveys to either acknowledge or say they exist or they do not exist, I know that they exist in this area.
  • And that, to me, just brings that in me ininin talking to ranchers, especially ranchers, and encourage them not to root plow not to clear, you know, to find different ways to make a living using the brush.
  • You know, bring in tourists, or making jellies and things out of the things that grow here for sales rather than to clear for live stock because, you know, along with our culture and history, you know, were losing so much.
  • And if we can just hold on to it a little bit longer maybe, you know, they'll be able to multiply andand survive the culture and the critters and the plants.
  • DT: Can you explain how you found a way to make a living out here on your tract of land? I understand you formed a nursery?
  • BT: Itit, you know, it just boggles my mind howhow people could survive here. And they did for centuries, you know, for hundreds and hundreds of years. I find arrowheads here that have been dated to, you know, 5000, 6000, 16,000 years old.
  • Obviously they lived heretheythey survived here. And when my wife and I moved here, I decided, you know, I know I can make a living working many areas. I mean, IIit doesn't bother me to be a janitor or to pump gasoline or whatever.
  • I mean, I've done it before I've had, you know, really bad jobs and I had some good jobs.
  • But I wanted to see cancan people today actually make a living without destroying the habitat that we have and because of my interest in plants II started a small native plant nursery. And it was basically moremore of a research type than anything else.
  • I really wasn't growing for sales. I was just kind of exploring the possibilities of what things can be marketed how can we produce them? You know, its one thing to buy a tomato seed and mix the soil mix and put the seed in water and a tomato comes up.
  • Well that's a tomato that's been under cultivation forand worked on genetically for many, many generations. Native plants are extremely difficult to germinate. Some of them you could take 1000 seeds and plant them, you'd be lucky if you got 50 seedlings to come up.
  • So when I first set up it was kind of exploring one of the possibilities that I might be able to do to make a living right here without destroying anything. Just be partpart of the woods rather than, you know, destroying it.
  • And I worked on that for about two years in my littleand I tried many different techniques of germinating different things and then finally when I decided I think I can do it, you know, and I think I can actuallyit might be hard at first but I think I can find enough people that have interest in landscaping with native plants that are the best choice around.
  • You have color, you have texture, you have, you know, blooms for attracting birds and butterflies. And, you know, anything that you can find with exotics, you can find natives.
  • The only problem is that if a person gets married, they buy a new house, they buyhave a nice little lot, they want to landscape it, they go to the nursery and they buy what the nursery offers. Mainly exotics. Lots of color, lots of stuff, so that's what they use.
  • And I figured they need to have an alternative. So when they go to the nursery, they have more choice and when they think about low maintenance, hardiness, along with color, you getanything you can do then maybe they'll start thinking hey, yeah I'm goingI'm going to try natives.
  • And it has beenmy first two years I would grow and give away cause I ran out of space. And I needed, you know, I need to grow more but I'm out of space so whoever would come and say, what is that? I would say oh, that is a scarlet sage. God its got a beautiful red bloom.
  • Yeah you want it take it, I need more space for the other stuff. Andand eventually, I started moving them from a one gallon up toso it took, I would say, basically about twelve years before things started to happen.
  • And now I have trouble keeping up with demand with native plants. The demand has just skyrocketed.
  • Thankful to the Texas Nature Conservancy, the Parks and Wildlife, the Department of Interior, the Sierra Club, the Frontier Audubon Society, you know, all those organizations that have pushed the use of native plants, have educated people, have had seminars and people are learning all the advantages that they have.
  • They're starting to appreciate birds and they realize that if I have my yard and I have lots of exotics, I'm not going to have the birds because birds are like people.
  • You know, ifI recall going with my wife and in-laws to a restaurant and they would order shrimp and oysters andand I would be thinking, God what can I order to eat? I mean, like those foods are foreign to me. II don't know how to eat it.
  • I don'tI don't develop the taste for it. And birds and animals are the same way.
  • You know, there might be plenty of food here in an exotic plant and they simply do not recognize it, they don't recognize the smell, they don't recognize the taste. So even though we might think, you know, I'llI'll plant this plant and itllit's good food, it'll bring birds.
  • No, it won't bring birds. They don'tthey don't recognize the plant for nesting material. So if they're interested inif they have any interest inin the wildlife then they'll develop interest for the natives. Because that's what brings them--and those interests have skyrocketed.
  • You know, butterfliesI have seenII saw birds first, you know, theyeverybody was big on birding. And, in the last few years, I see butterflies. So now there's a big demand for butterfly gardens.
  • We have lots and lots and lots of native plants that the adult butterfly has no use for other than laying its eggs but without that plant the species would die. Because that's where the adult lays it eggs and that's what thethe caterpillar feeds on.
  • Even though it doesn't have a flower, some of the plants in the background here is a native plant called Guaiacum ,a fascinating plant itself.
  • But one of the uses thatthat we have for Guaiacum is that the lyside butterfly, little small butterfly, will check all the plants of all the four hundred and fifty species that we have in our surrounding area.
  • It will not choose any of the plants except Guaiacum to lay its little egg. And that's what the caterpillar feeds on.
  • Right next to the Guaiacum I have a plant, the lime prickly-ash colima that also has aa medicinal use and the giant swallowtails would not lay its eggs on any other plant other than the colima.
  • So asas people become aware of those things then that's what attracts the native plants. And that's what has helped me since I know whenever I do lectures or talks, I pretty much label my talks as the many uses of native plants.
  • And I use landscaping, butterfly gardens, medicinal, poisonous and things. So ifif myself and other people spread the information about natives, the demand for natives go up. So thanks to everybody.
  • But, you know, other than with awith a native plant nursery, my wife and I try to harvest, for example, the seed pods of the Mesquite tree, one of the most prevalent trees in South Texas.
  • The seed pod contains about 33% sugar and it was used by the indigenous people theythey would grind it by digging a hole in the ground, not necessarily hard rock or anything, on the ground.
  • It was dig a hole, they would harvest the seed pods, they would throw them in this hole. Then they would take a big stick and they would break it up. And, you can imagine. a little bit of moisture, 33% sugar, dirt, it would become a pretty messy material.
  • But they wouldafter it was all cut up and broken up, they would take it up, they would roll it into little balls and then they would set it up in the hot surface in the rock or in the soil and they would dehydrate it. They'd remove all the soil.
  • This hard ball would get real hard and then they could travel. They could take a yucca, they would cut the leaves and weave a little pouch.
  • They would put the mesquite balls in that little pouch and then they'dif they had to travel for a long distance, they had their food right there with them. They would take this little mesquite ball 33% sugar, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin D, amino acids.
  • It would have fructose, glucose, galactose, all the simple sugars. So it is very high in energy, a little bit of protein, and they could use it. Well, we take that bit of information and then we put it to use.
  • So when we do tours, we tell people were going to take mesquite seed pods before your very own eyes and were going to make chocolate chip cookies using flour that we will grind right here.
  • While I'm conducting the lecture, we will grind the flour and my wife will make the mix and before you leave you will eat chocolate chip cookies or oatmeal cookies or sweet bread made from the mesquite.
  • We make honey or jelly from the mesquite beans so we try to incorporate other little things that we can, you know, we couldn't probable make a living off of one thing and indigenous people couldn't.
  • Whenever they were hungry, almost all native plants have a downfall to them. If you can see a little white flower in the background, that's a Mexican olive or Anacahuita.
  • It produces a seed that's about the size of a regular olive and the fruit is edible but there's a word of caution. If you are starving and you become across a Mexican olive tree and the whole ground is littered with these little fruits, eat no more than maybe five at any one time.
  • Because if you eat more than five, maybe youyou're real hungry and you stretch it and you eat maybe sever or eight or nine or ten, you will live to regret it. It would give you an extremely bad headache. You would be very, very dizzy and it would make you literally sick.
  • If you eat more than you should of, you experience those things and you might even come with a really bad diarrhea. And all most all native plants are that way. They'llthey'll have a drawback.
  • Thethe indigenous people knew that and they would harvest the Anacahuita all the Anacahuita they could find.
  • They would harvest the Prickly Pear fruit. They would harvest all of the mesquite they could find and then when it was time to eat, I tell people they would eat cafeteria style.
  • They would have a little bit of bean pods from the mesquite, a couple of tunas, five or six seeds from the Anacahuita, a littlea little bit of granjeno and then they would eat on all of these things and you're fine.
  • If you just kind of mix them up and not engorge in any one thing, you're fine. Some of them will give you severe diarrhea.
  • So if you look at it genetically, there's a reason why a plant would not want anyone to eat all of the seeds because then you have one chance of reproducing.
  • But if you introduce a chemical that will make somebody sick, an animal will learn, they will eat a few and then they go on their way and disperse the seeds in this direction, then another one will disperse the seed on that direction and your chances of survival are then multiplied by however many eat from your tree.
  • So that's a genetic basis for it andand the indigenous people learned how much and what not to eat andand we try to take advantage of that andand produce what we can sell.
  • DT: Speaking of reproducing, I am curious how you found some of these specimens out in the brush and collected their seed at the right time of year and helped them germinate and cultivated them?
  • BT: I was aI was... (misc.)
  • BT: I was a little III really enjoyed history and I kind of think like, I guess I think sort of like a tree or I think ifif I'm a treeI'm a mesquite tree, say okay, how can I reproduce?
  • Well I could reproduce ififif somebody would eat my seeds but it wouldn't be like a bird because my seed is real hard. It would be like a hoofed animal like a peccary, or maybe a deer or something that would chew me up real good.
  • So I'd say okay, so I think that in order to germinate mesquite I have to grind it really well. Like what an animal would do.
  • And if an animal ate a mesquite seed pod, it would eat it up and it would spend a great amount of time in its digestive tract and then it wouldit would pass through the system.
  • So then I'd say okay, if I'm going to germinate it, I probably need to grind it up, then I would probably need to keep it really moist for maybe one day or two days before I even germinate it.
  • And sure enough I can take a mesquite seedseed pod, break it open and plant it and it will never germinate. I mean I shouldn't say never but it would take one or two or three years before a little seedling comes up.
  • But by observation andand thinking okay howwho would eat this and what process would this seed go through before it would germinate? So I try to use those techniques. Some of the themsome of the fruit, sort of like granheno(?) which is a real fruity type of plant.
  • I would think well a bird would probably eat thisthis seed. And it would probably go through its system pretty fast and the bird dropping wouldit would drop it somewhere. And so that seed I would have to treat different than I would like Mesquite.
  • A Mexican olive, the same thing. It would go through a different process. So rather than just planting seeds and see what happens, I would have to think what process would this seed naturally go through in order to germinate?
  • And then I would have to simulate that process and get it toto germinate. So it was, you know, it was doing a lot of thinking and kind of thinking it through rather than just planting them and see what happens. Well I'll try something later on.
  • So thatthat has helped me a lot and its still amazing that not anot a single year, not a single growing season goes by that I don't discover a quicker way, a better way to germinate than I did last year. And, you know, to me thatthat in itself, makes it exciting.
  • I never, I mean, I'm doing repetitive job. It takes me almost two months just to fill the tube with dirt.
  • Everyday from sun up to sun down, seven days a week and that is extremely boring but then comes the seeds andand then I unlock something that I didn't know last year. A species that I planted 2,000 of last year and I only got 200 this year.
  • I've discovered that I can plant 1,000 and get 800. I am going to write that down.
  • You know, so those things make my day and it justI find hope that not in the too distance future, I see that the wood from the mesquite tree wouldwould find a way into lumberlumber stores where it would have things made from mesqhardwood floors and other things made from the mesquite.
  • Well, it would pretty much wipe out the mesquite population. If we would just harvest it and not have anybody to reproduce it in large quantities where it could bebecome commercially available.
  • So a farmer owns 1,000 acres and the price of watermelon has dropped and he has already failed three years, plant mesquite. Have a mesquite orchard. And we now have a technique that isit'll be commercially feasible to produce it in large quantities.
  • So then in a few years you'd have a lumberyard right there. So those are the things thatthat excite me because I can find new uses for plants that have always been here. That people that have the land, they can put this plants back and actually make a living out of it.
  • You know, the Tuna or Prickly Pear Cactus has a real high demand in Japan and in Italy. The production of the tuna cannot meet the demand for the fruit in those countries so it grows fine here.
  • So some people are saying well, there's a couple of people that have told me that they were like three generationsthird generation farmers. They would produce Sorghum. And they can produce more income in one acre of Prickly Pear than they could in 20 acres of Sorghum.
  • Now that'sthat's a thing that will ensure that Prickly Pear will be here for a long time. Those kind of things. And it excites me whenwhen we discover things that make that thing possible.
  • DT: I have heard and maybe you mentioned this earlier, that a number of the plants go to private clients like the ranchers that you mentioned but they might go to the Nature of Conservancy or to the Department of Interior for them to plant. What would they be using them for?
  • BT: The Department of Interior has a goal of preserving anywhere from 4% to 8% ofof what used to be here. Werewere losing it. Inin some habitats we only have 9898% has been lost.
  • In other types of habitat, we have lost 95% of the habitat that used to be here through farming and development and whatever. The Department of Interior has aa plan to conserve at least 4, maybe optimistically, 8% which is almost nothing of what we have.
  • And one of the programs that they have has a large demand for native plants to restore habitats. Some of the old fields thatthat have beenthe soil has been exhausted, the topsoil is gone because of continuous farming.
  • Maybe they had the luxury of using water from the river to irrigate. The salinity content has gone up and they can't do much with farming.
  • The Department of Interior will purchase some of that land and because natives have a tap root and they can penetrate real deep into the soil. They restore that to what used to be historically here.
  • And they buy a lotlot of plants from me. But also as that goes along, a lot of the ranchers are starting to realize that you cannot compete with feed lots inin Dallas and in El Paso and in other areas where a guya rancher here clears 1000 acres.
  • You know, the average ranch in Starr County is 8,000 acres. The average ranch, I mean, that'sthat's a good chunk of land. So its not untypical for afor a rancher to clear 1 to 2000 acres ofof brush land to raise a few more head of cattle. Well, that's not going to make it.
  • Youyou have to have a much better return for your money. You cannot afford to sell a cow for $100 here at the sale and somebody will buy it, take it to a feed lot and turn it around and sell it for, you know, 2 or $3,000 to the meat industry.
  • I mean, you're really getting thethe lowest price you can. And a lot of them are starting to realize that. And this is never going to change. We cannot produce more. We cannot produce more efficiency because of our climatic conditions.
  • So they had to find alternative ways and one of the things that they are looking more and more into is, you know, I still have 600 acres of land. I've really abused it. I really have grazed it, you know, to the maximum but if I restore it, I can bring tourists.
  • I've got the birds. We've got the wildlife. Wewe've got about the best diversity there is around as far as plant life.
  • So they're thinking more of diversifying and one of the real easy ways to diversify is to encourage winter Texans and others to take tours and enjoy the native plants and thethe wildlife that we have.
  • So those are becoming other nice sector of customers here that I am catering to. II specifically cater to their needs. Somebody says, you know, I want to bring birds and butterflies to my ranch. I'll say, I'llI'll cater to you.
  • I will specifically grow those plants that you need for that kind of thing. Other ranchers will come and say, I don't want to mess with people, you know, I've got 2,000 acres of land and I want to increase my deer population for deer hunting.
  • II want to get more money. I want to produce bigger bucks in my land. I want to charge more. I'll cater to you and I will taper plants that will increase your deer population because those are the browsing things that deer willor need.
  • So because II'm lucky enough to have lived here, other than a period of time when I was gone when I graduated from high school, and then after I made enough money to come back, I live here. I knowI know the area. I know the plants.
  • I know who needs what, you know, as far as the animals andand stuff.
  • So I'm in ain a very nice position that I know the wildlife and I know what they feed on and I know, you know, I know the things that are needed in order to make their dreams come true and that's another little sector of my green house, that every year it keeps growing and growing and growing.
  • So it'sit's kind of nice that it's expanding.
  • DT: You mentioned that you and some of your neighbors are trying to capitalize on the winter Texans that come here and of some of the ecotourists. Can you talk about some of the tours that you provide and what people are interested in? How do you pique their interest?
  • BT: It'sit's amazing that a forforfor a long time, the tours that we got were birders.
  • And, you know, II really, really enjoy people in general, and especially the people thatthat have the time and luxury to take long vacations andand come to a place such as this because it's such a clean economy.
  • You know, we'll be walking up in a trail and somebody might have discarded aa coke can or a gum wrapper and it's amazing to see them, you know, pick it up and put it in their pockets.
  • So it's a clean economy and forfor a long time they used to come and bird and we have about 142 species of birds right here that they can enjoy. And well, you know, I'm a botanist III can't help it. We would do birding.
  • You know, we would bird fordepending if birding was good, we would go maybe 45 minutes of birding. And then I would tell them hey, let's go for a ride. Let's go and lets botanize, you know, talk about native plants.
  • And some of them would say, nah, I'm going to stay here and bird. Okay, well those of you that want to stay, you know, we also have more birds down there and those that want to come with me, you know, we'll take an hour hike.
  • And half of the group would go with me, half of the group would stay here.
  • And I started seeing the numbers started to shift, you know, to where 100% of theof the group will bird watch for 45 minutes and then 100% of the group will go with me because word has spread that man, and II tell them, imagine you go into a library and you're walking through aisle and aisle and aisle of books.
  • All kinds of books, until you look at them and they're just books and thenand then, all of a sudden, you stop at and aisle and you see a book and you become kind of interested, you pull in out and you read it. Man, its like another world. I said, picture that here.
  • Because if it be anybody else, you'd be walking here and you'd be looking at green stuff. But when I am with you, all of a sudden. I'll stop and I'll tell you, did you know that this is manzanita? It's called Barbados Cherry. And this plant is edible and it's a medicinal plant.
  • It has anti-inflammatory substance in it and mymy grandfather, my father and even I used it when I was young.
  • I got kicked by a mule one time in my leg and it kicked me so hard that it swelled and before I panicked my father said, okay son don't panic, don't move, stay right there and he ran to the brush and he brought this littlea piece of this plant with him.
  • And he tore all the leaves apart and he chewed to get it moist and then he applied it to my leg and he took hishis handkerchief off his neck and he wrapped it. I saidand I had been kicked before when I was by myself and God man I felt relief within a couple of hours.
  • I could walk and then I expected two or three days later to be a big bruise in my leg. No, none of that because the use of this plant. So here we had the use. If it was producing berries and we were hungry, we could make a jelly.
  • We could take it inside the house and make a jelly. Andand I repeat this almost plant afterlittle history, little things so to them its like, man you are right. This is like a library. When were with you, its like one chapter, one chapter, one chapter.
  • I did a tour one time for forty-five minutes on the trail and we went forty-five minutes. Theythey only had an hour and they got here and used the facilities and then we went on a little tour. And then they had to leave.
  • And then I had a group of students that came from a university and in the same trail that I did a forty-five-minute tour, I did seven hours on the same trail.
  • And it was on a weekend and my wife was with me, and as they were leaving we could hear theirthe doors in their vehicles as they were locking the gate and they were leaving and my wife said, you know you didn't talk about this. I said, yes, I know.
  • I said didn't realize, you know, II try not to ever make my toursand we attended tours to see how tours are conducted and almost 99% of the tours we say, uh huh, we don't want to do it that way.
  • Because its likethere might be ten people that do the same tour and it doesn't matter, you could getyou could do the tour ten times and you hear exact same thing. When I do it, I tell the people, lets go out there and see what's out there.
  • And I'll be walking and I'll see something that's blooming and I'll talk about the most ininteresting things. But this time it was seven hours. It was a seven hour tour and I realized, there is so much here. I cannot even cover it in seven hours.
  • That's how diverse, that's how many uses native plants have. And mainly it was just the uses of native plants. So I'veI've had people that tell me, you know, I didn't want to come but my aunt said, you know, I'll pay for you to come. I want you to come with me. I said, no.
  • I thought she said they were going to talk about plants. I thought it was so boring. It is the most interesting tour I have ever been on and I've been doing tours for, you know, the last 20 years. So I guess when I do it, I get really excited.
  • Because, I mean, like I cant help it, you know, I love doing this stuff and IIIit saved my life. You know, this stuff saved my life. It saved mymy family's life. We would have starved to death.
  • We would ofwe would of probably died from some illnesses if it hadn't been for this stuff. So I get excited and I think the excitement transfers onto the group and itthey leave here really, real excited.
  • DT: These people come from many cities far away and if there is a great deal here you see you see so much here yet I guess its in comparison to what they've left if where there's so much that has been lost. And I am wondering if you could comment a little bit on what's been lost and what you are saving here?
  • BT: One of the things that really bother me sometimes is whenwhen somebody, you know, a Canadian or somebody from New York or, you know, someone from up North come to the tour and they tell me, you know, they used to do something similar to that when I was young but I can't remember what it was.
  • And I say, you know, how true that even here in South Texas I have kids, you know, they are maybe 4th or 5th grade and they'll come here and they'll see a colored lizard and they all almost all at the same time yell, an iguana.
  • I say, oh my God, you know, were losing so much. These kidswhen I was young I was, you know, like I said, you know, HEB and Wal-Mart and the town, Rio Grande City, consisted mainly ofof two hardware stores where you would buy a plow and you would buy a can of beans in the same store.
  • And basically that was it. The rest of it, if you needed a tool, you made a tool. If you needed, you know, a cup, you would find an old tin can and you would remodel it, reshape it, and that would be your cup. And you would treasure the thing.
  • And, you know, we have lost so much and even the generation that's coming loses so much. So when they come here, its amazing to me that when they came here the first year, I thought maybe two or three things will sink into their mind.
  • And then they come maybe two years later and one of the things that I do is I repeat the same things to them, the same plant. I'll come across Barbados Cherry and I'll tell them, you know, this is Barbados Cherry, no thorns.
  • Remember I told you that this is thorny brush country. Well I lied to you because there are some that have no thorns. And it is calledand I'll tell them, and I'll say, take atake a piece of it and smell it and taste it.
  • And then two years later, well when I'm doing that, I let it go by and maybe ten minutes later I will say, what is this plant? And two or three will remember. And that's going out.
  • When I'm coming back I see the percentages, you know, like 50% of the kids are now yelling Hawthorne, granjeno. Well, twotwo years down the line, I get the same group and now they're a couple of grades up and I'm amazed that I had an effect on these kids.
  • They remembered a lot of this stuff and then now they're learning.
  • One of the things that Ithat I'mI'm working on is when I read a book and I'mI'm doing research onon a medicinal plant and it will say, you know, Barbados Cherry has medicinal uses period.
  • I mean they don't evethey know it has a medicinal use but they don't know how its used. Is it chewed, is it boiled is it drank as a tea. So those gaps I'm hoping that someday Ill able to fill so that it makes the whole picture complete. End of reel 2095