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plants in Mexico: Zacatecas and San Luis Potosi

I just returned from a wonderful vacation--nine days in the north 
central Mexican altiplano and Sierras.  We first landed in Zacatecas 
city, capital of the state of Zacatecas. This city was built with the 
wealth of silver mines in the 17th and 18th century.  The streets and 
buildings are made of stone.  The oldest cathedrals were built in the 
late 1500s.  The city is situated on an altiplano at an altitude of 
over 8000 feet.  The soil is very red and seems to be alluvial.  The 
land is mostly flat, and since the air is very clear you can see the 
mountains very far away in every direction.  One sees many Brazilian 
pepper trees and jacarandas, as well as prickly pear cactuses and 
ocitillio.  

I saw many flowers in the convolvus and malvacea families 
growing in the fields along the roadside, none of which are cultivated 
here in California.  Some of them, particularly the ones that looked 
like convovulous were quite spectacular---a low, mounding shrub with 
huge purple flowers, an even lower shrub that sends out 5 to 7 foot 
vine-like stems crowned with 5 inch white convolvulous like flowers.  

There were also buddleias that I did not recognize.  These seemed to 
prefer rocky soil with very sharp drainage.  I saw them growing on 
the faces of rock walls thirty feet above the ground, and emerging 
from the insides of wells where their roots had found purchase on the 
slippery rock walls of the well.  They were big and tree-like 
(compared to b. davidii) reaching up 20 feet with only one or two 
"trunks".  The shrubby branches arched downwards and the flowers were 
buttery yellow, very fragrant, and held in pannicles that were more 
branching, pyramid like and shorter than the sausage-like wands of b. davidii. 
(sorry for my laymans descriptions).   I tried to gather some of the 
seeds of this buddleia, by taking some of the dried flower pannicles. 
But I cannot see the seeds.  Are buddleia seeds very tiny?  Has 
anyone propagated a buddleia from seed?  Any advice for a) locating 
the seeds and b) germinating them?

What thrilled me even more were the plants I saw when I went up 
high in the mountains of the state of San Luis Potosi to the ghost 
town of Real de Catorce.  There on the hillsides were thousands of 
salvias and plants in the mallow family.  The salvias came in many 
different colors and at least 4-5 different species which 
looked somewhat but not quite like some of the mexican salvias that are 
cultivated here in the states--like s. coahilensis, s. microphylla, s. greggii, s. graham , s. 
sinaloensis. (please forgive my mispellings please I'm at work without my 
reference books.)  Though I consulted with Betsy Clebtsch's book on 
salvia, I didn't recognize any of the ones I saw.   

I collected as many seeds as I could, but it was 
too early in the fall to find many ripe seeds.  I probably only ended 
up with 20-30 ripe ones. I also collected some of the poor, rocky soil in a 
little bag.  I know this is illegal.  I was intending to sterilize it 
in the oven and then analyze it with my soil testing kit.  Did I do a 
very bad thing?  Can anyone advise me how to best germinate my salvia 
seeds?  Is there any possibility of ripening or germinating green 
salvia seeds?   
 
Apart from the salvia were many small woody shrubs in the mallow family, 
with which I am not so familiar.  Only about 2 feet tall, they had 
upright stalks studded with small, 1/2inch flowers in peach, pink and 
tangerine hues.  

Back in Zacatecas I bought a reference book in Spanish called 
Catalogo de Nombres Vulgares y Cientificos de Plantas Mexicanas 
(Catalogue of Common and Scientific Names of Mexican Plants).  This 
tome by Maximino Martinez cross references the latin, scientific 
names of Mexican plants with the common names that were bestowed by 
the many indigenous peoples of mexico. It seems like a wonderful 
reference, especially for those interested in ethnobotony.  I thought 
that I could get an idea of the species I had seen from this book.  
Indeed, Martinez lists many species of Buddleia and Salvia but I have 
no other reference book with which to get good descriptions of these 
species.  For example, does anyone know buddleia americana or b. 
tomentosa?  Can any recommend other books that might list these 
Mexican plants.  They were so beautiful!

Finally, it seemed like there were so many plants there that we could 
be growing in our mediterranean gardens.  Why are so few of them 
being cultivated? I'm just a lay person and I was beside myself 
gawking at the many beautiful species.

Rachel Baker
Berkeley, California
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