New studies put salt cedar in more favorable light
Category: Local... Nature... Science...
Posted Friday, November 07, 2008 at 10:04 AM [GMT-6]

For as long as I can remember, salt cedar has been mentioned in West Texas in the same terms reserved for horse thieves, anti-gun lobbyists, and Jane Fonda. The plant (also known as "tamarisk") has been accused of such varied offenses as slurping up scarce water in vast quantities, crowding out more beneficent flora, chasing off birds, and causing otherwise sensible folks to vote for Bill Richardson. (I made one of those things up, but I'm not saying which.)

But a new study seems to indicate that we've unfairly maligned this species of tree, which was imported from Eurasia in the late 1800s as an ornamental shrub, and which liked it here so well that it spread uncontrollably (not unlike the macarena and reality TV) along many of the country's waterways.

A ten-year study of riparian zone ecology along the Lower Colorado River has yielded some rather surprising results, including:

• Salt cedars consume less than 1/3 the amount of water previously thought. Researchers contend that the average tree consumes less water on an annual basis than the average Bermuda grass lawn (although that may say more about our profligate watering habits than the tree's consumption).


• Salt cedars do not displace native trees like cottonwoods and willows, but rather take hold when ecosystems are disrupted (generally via human action) to the point where those subjectively more desirable trees can no longer thrive.


• Rather than ruining habitats for native birds, salt cedars have proven to be attractive to some endangered native species such as the Southwestern willow flycatcher and the yellow-billed cuckoo.

These new findings illustrate what happens when technology advances to the point where things that were previously estimated can now be accurately measured. The resulting data doesn't always support perceptions.

[Inspiration for this post was provided by an article in El Despoblado (PDF document), a newsletter published by the Sibley Nature Center. More reporting on the salt cedar study is found in this excerpt from the October, 2004 Southwest Climate Outlook (PDF document)]

I was going to supplement this post with a photo of a salt cedar, using as a subject one we found growing along the stream bed down the block (and one at which we recoiled at spotting, because we hadn't yet learned of the new research and we were appalled that our park might be taken over by the plant). However, when I bicycled down to get the photo, I found that the grounds keeper had removed the offending plants. A bit of irony, that.