By Tom Schweich
On the Peaks to Plains trail about 2/3 of the way from the Grant Terry Bridge to the Tough Cuss Bridge, look in the talus piles below the Canal Zone climbing area for a 4-5 foot shrub with clusters of small yellow flowers. This is “Mountain Tail-Leaf” — Pericome caudatus A. Gray. Though it is in the sunflower family (Asteraceae) it has only disk flowers, and not the large ray flowers that characterize the typical sunflower. The leaves are triangular and have a long tail, giving it both its common name “Tail-Leaf” and scientific name caudatus, which means “having a tail.”
First collected by Charles Wright in 1851 who wrote that he found it “… among rocks, on the sides of mountains, at the copper mines, New Mexico …” Mr. Wright was working with the scientific corps of the U. S. Boundary Commission. Their itinerary from July to November 1851, was from El Paso to the copper mines of Santa Rita del Cobre in the southwestern part of New Mexico, and then into the northern part of Mexico. It seems certain that Wright’s collection of Mountain Tail-Leaf was made near Santa Rita del Cobre, about 12 miles east of Silver City, NM. The town no longer exists, having been completely swallowed up by the Freeport-McMoRan Chino open-pit copper mining complex.
We now know our plant’s primary range is in the lower elevation mountains of Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, with a few scattered collections in northern Mexico, and eastern California. Near Golden, it is known only from Clear Creek Canyon, but also occurs around Pine and Buffalo Creek in central Jefferson County.
