Mesquite Trees Provide Food and a Pharmacy
Friday, June 25th, 2010The ethnobotany of Mesquite trees is extensive. The trees provide food, medicine, beverages, glue, hair dye, firewood, and furniture. Mesquites coevolved with large herbivores such as mammoths, mastodons, and ground sloths, which ate the pods and dispersed them widely. When these Pleistocene animals became extinct, mesquites retreated to flood plains and washes where water and weathering scarified the seeds and aided germination. The introduction of cattle helped to expand the range of mesquites once again.
