Smell of a Hockey Bag

In October rabbitbrush explodes into bloom all over Santa Fe. It is everywhere, and in a dry, dry year like we've been having (no rain at all since mid September, and very little before that) it is the only thing to be seen. All other wildflowers have vanished to wait for a wetter year, and the world becomes an expanse of endless rabbitbrush.

Rabbitbrush explodes in flower

Rabbits don't eat this -- very few animals touch it -- but since it's the only cover around, rabbits hide in it, giving it the name rabbitbrush. It's also called chamisa. It's such a pervasive sight in the local scenery that streets and landmarks and places in Santa Fe are named for it -- Chamisa Path, Arroyo Chamisa, Chamisa Street, Avenida de Chamisas, on and on.

It fills arroyos and hangs over walkways, and a stroll around the walking paths in our neighborhood is a walk through tunnels of rabbitbrush.

Do you see the man on the roof? He thought I was taking his picture.

It grows with no water in every open niche and sandy stretch and hillside. It's a big, woody shrub with silver needle-like leaves and bright yellow fall flowers.

If there is any open space near your house, it's filled with rabbitbrush.

It's actually attractive, certainly better than looking at open sand and stalks of dead looking things in a dry autumn. The yellow flowers are bright and prolific, absolutely covering the shrub.

Bright yellow tiny flowers cover the plant

But here's the thing. The botanical name of this tough plant is Chrysothamnus nauseosus. That should tell you something.

It stinks in bloom. People say it smells like wet sweat socks. I raised two ice hockey players and can tell you it smells like an adolescent hockey player's gear bag. Kind of a fond memory now, actually.

But the odor is not pervasive. It doesn't waft on the breeze, and not all plants even smell like anything at all. When they do it's distinctly nauseating, a heavy human sweat smell, but it's not everywhere.

There are even garden worthy cultivars that are sold in nurseries. There were three dwarf chamisas here in the front yard when we moved in. They formed a semi circle with a cactus and I put a pot in the middle. 

Dwarf chamisas in a circle in the yard

They were kind of cute and did not smell like anything. But they had been oddly planted, just stuck in a shallow bit of dirt and rocks on top of the landscape fabric -- no one had cut out the fabric for the roots, and even a tough chamisa can't grow in a few inches of dirt over a cloth barrier. They all died the next year.

I took the dead plants out. I thought about replacing them and planting them properly, but the idea of having rabbitbrush in my yard when there was an endless ocean of them all around us seemed pointless. So they were not replaced. 

I miss them, though. And when I do catch the stinky sweaty smell of the chamisas growing wild, I miss the years I spent with hockey bags smelling up the car and house. Really, though, what I miss are my hockey players.