Flowers Resembling Wisteria

"Among all plants, vines are the most vivid examples of nature's playful spontaneity. When they decide to grow, they grow without knowing where to grow to. They never miss an opportunity to engage themselves in a playful act with whomever they meet.The movement of the vine dutifully records the memory of its adventures."

 - Living Arts Originals

Although my wisteria is stunningly lovely this year, I have posted enough about wisteria. So, instead, I thought I’d use this post not so much as an excuse to show off my white wisteria, but to write about flowers that look like wisteria. Clever how I did that, eh?

Have you ever thought you saw a large white wisteria tree? I have. We were both wrong. What we saw was a black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia). The flowers bear a remarkable resemblance to white wisteria, especially from a distance. Upon closer inspection, they are clearly not wisteria.

The picture on left below is wisteria. The picture on the right is a black locust. Close resemblance, but clearly not the same.

An intriguing fact is that all three plants - the black locust, the mescal and the wisteria - are not only drought tolerant, they all have similar foliage: pinnately compounded leaves. My personal theory about these similarities is that this is simply further evidence of  a conspiracy by Mother Nature to keep me from ever learning any serious botany.


A more intriging flower, for me, is found on a tidy bush, intriguingly called Mescal bean (Sophora secundiflora, or Calia secundiflora), also known as the Texas Mountain Laurel. All three pictures on the left are of the mescal flower, bush and seed pods. The seeds inside are bright orange-red.

It surprised me to learn here that mescal beans “are also not related to the highly intoxicating beverage called ‘mescal’ or ‘mezcal’, made from the fermented and distilled juices of several North American species of Agave, including A. americana and A. atrovirens. Incidentally, the fermented juice is called pulque, and the highly-alcoholic distilled products include Mezcal and Tequila.” Good to know.

It also surprised me to read that that the mescal bean is not related to the peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii), although  “The poisonous seeds contain the alkaloid cytisine, and were once used in the intoxicating, vision-seeking ‘red bean dance’ prior to the widespread use of the "less-life-threatening" peyote cactus.” So, peyote is less deadly than mescal. Also good to know.

The politically incorrect plant sign on the mescal bean in the LA Arboratum where I took these photos this month explains, “The wood yields a yellow dye. The bright orange-red seeds were sacred to Indians and placed in burials. Now they are made into jewelry.” A depressingly succinct summary of how native culture has been misunderstood and corrupted by descendants of European settlers.

We may no longer do the red bean dance, but at least we can now buy our intoxicants in clearly labeled bottles at the Booze Barn; and we don’t have to keep all the details straight about what might kill us. More importantly, we can simply enjoy these beautiful flowers for their appearance and not their chemical make up.

Glasses Half Occupied

"In the hinterlands of Pommerania, there is a mountain made of the hardest diamond. It's one hour deep into the earth, one hour up toward the sky, one hour long and one hour wide. To this mountain comes a little bird, once every hundred years, to sharpen its beak. And when this bird has worn away the whole mountain, the first second of eternity has passed."
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I shall now recount the tale of my adventures, beginning with my abounding optimism that when my wisteria bloom, all is right with the world.

In my younger days, this season might have found me in a coffee shop with free wifi, attempting to defeat the forces of an obsolete version of MS Windows and write my novel. Younger still, I might have been in the recreation room of Mom and Dad’s split level, watching an after school special about how being reunited with one's lost puppy is a metaphor for finding meaning and purpose amid the chaos spawned by evil forces inhabiting the shadows beneath one’s bed.

The next time my wisteria blooms, I might be outside gardening downwind of the fragrant blooms of my white counter-clockwise twining Chinese Wisteria (Wisteria Sinensis) and appreciating life. The purple wisteria pictured here is in the front yard, and is the clockwise twining Japanese Wisteria (wisteria floribunda). Or, I might be meeting with my psychiatrist to unpack the formless fears engendered by a bad case of Alien Abduction Syndrome compounded with looming tendrils of senility.

What these glimpses of remembered past and imagined futures have in common – besides Lent and wisteria – are that they probably manifest some underlying dysfunction in the way I see the world and/or in which the world sees me. Last night, Tech Support Guy told me that atrial fibrillation has been associated with increased risk of Alzheimer’s and so have cold sores. This depresses me almost as much as if I experienced dramatically foreshadowing visions of, say, rafters dripping with blood.

Then it occurs to me that there is a positive side to losing one’s mind. One reason I am not visited by gloomy forebodings these days, is that with age comes acceptance. Also, thanks to my hearing impairment, the moaning of ghosts in the shadows outside my window no longer disturbs my rest.

The prospect of a fathomless future spent in a skilled nursing facility with a semi-deaf roommate who believes in heaven and hell, and swears that Lawrence Welk is alive and ageless scares the crap out of me. But like Grandma once said, the good thing about dementia is that the victim doesn’t know it. She might as well have said I may have Alzheimer’s but at least I don’t have Alzheimer’s.

So remember when you visit: my glassy-eyed unfocused stare and the perpetual dribble of drool at the corners of my mouth may frighten you, but inside my own head, I’m actually imagining that I am in an episode of Pigs in Space where Link Heartthrob proposes marriage and I accept. Which may not be such a bad place to spend eternity waiting for the wisteria to bloom, or for a sharp-beaked bird to wear down a mountain.