colitas

As per the "Hotel California" lyrics: “On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair/Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air...." Here's some more background into the term "colitas" (quelites). My partner and I came about this kind of a backwards way. I was studying plants prized by local curanderas (female folk healers) of the Northern New Mexico/San Luis Valley area of Colorado, and came upon "quelites," pronounced "Keh-LEE-tehs." The term specifically refers to a local weed that grows prolifically, colloquially known as "lambsquarters." Further research found quelites is a Mexican/American term for any wild green. We've also seen it as a Spanish translation on a bag of spinach from the grocery store. My partner remarked one day, "I know where I've heard that term before," and sang off the first two lines of the Hotel California song, thus the connection. Quelites and colitas are phonetically identical. The term is used in different geographic regions to refer to specific plants that grow locally, but, much like common names in English, can mean quite different species of plants.