A Wealth of Wildflowers

The wildflowers just keep coming in our corner of the Hill Country.  These images are from (of all places) the cement plant located between New Braunfels and San Marcos.  The meadow was seeded last fall, and our abundant fall and winter rains worked their magic.

Thank you, Texas Industries.  And thanks be to God!

Wildflowers

It is wildflower time in Texas--the state with more varieties of wildflowers and more miles of wildflower-strewn roads than any other state.  And this year--thanks to the abundant fall and winter rains, the wildflowers are putting on a show that is spectacular.

Last week we took our visitors from Connecticut and Kansas City to Wildseed Farm, a 200 acre farm that specializes in raising wildflowers and harvesting the seeds for resale.  Wildseed is located about 7 miles east of Fredericksburg, in the Texas Hill Country.  The many varieties on the Wildseed plots were just beginning to come into bloom--promising many weeks of colorful displays.

We will be back--this show is too good to miss!

Meanwhile, here in New Braunfels, 70 miles south, the flowering has already begun--even in our own back yard.

Last year we bought three bluebonnet plants and placed them in the back of the yard where we have a rocky meadow.  Bluebonnets are an annual--not a perennial--so the spreading of bluebonnets comes from the seeds that fall from mature plants and lay fallow until the following year.  Our three bluebonnet plants have seeded themselves and we are enjoying these lovely flowers right out our windows.

More to come!

Cactus Flowers?

Are cacti considered wildflowers? I tend to think of wildflowers as small, often requiring a closeup lens to reveal their beauty. Cacti, on the other hand, are often large and imposing. Are they wildflowers?

We have quite a bit of cactus in the back of our yard--beyond the grass and the flowers. Recently they have burst into bloom, and the flowers are beautiful to look at (if short lived). The colors of the blooms in this cactus which is so abundant range from yellow to orange to red. I hope the picture gives an idea of how lovely they are in bloom.

Bluebonnets!

Yes, we saw bluebonnets on the way home. The rain had stopped; the clouds were gone; and the sky was as bright as the flowers.

We took the advice of Texas Highways magazine that the best spots for viewing bluebonnets were in Washington County, and they were so right. Obviously the drought of Central Texas had not extended as far east as the Brenham, Texas area, as we saw field after field full of flowers. Often there were pink buttercups mixed in with the bluebonnets (a type of lupine) and occasionally there was the bright red of Indian paint brushes. The star of the day was the bluebonnet, the state flower of Texas, and this was the perfect weekend for this drive.

Washington-on-the-Brazos is the place where the Texians [sic] declared their independence from Mexico on 2 March 1836. There are a number of exhibits and a museum in the park, but we saved the history lesson for another day. This trip was devoted to magnifient, abundant wildflowers.

Lantana texana

Connecticut has, arguably, the best gardens in the United States. I don’t know why that is so, as the soil is thin and rocky in places and the winters long and cold. Nevertheless, every spring the gardens awaken from their dormancy, and, eureka! The colors erupt again.

Along with great gardens go memorable garden tours. One of the best to my mind is the garden tour in the village of Stonington-by-the-Sea, close to the Rhode Island border. The protected inlet combined with the moisture from the Sound give Stonington gardeners an extra edge—and they take advantage of it. We traveled down to Stonington for the garden tour whenever we could, often accompanied by our friends and fellow gardeners, the Smiths. In addition to the gardens tucked away behind the antique homes in Stonington, there are also a number of vendors displaying wares of special interest to the garden aficionados from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York. One year the Smiths took home a stunning lantana plant from our visit to Stonington. I had not previously known the lantana, which appears to be almost a hothouse hybrid, combining as it does hot pink and bright yellow in the same blossoms. A rare specimen indeed!

Imagine my surprise yesterday to see on my walk with Sammy the dog a bush in full bloom on some unoccupied property that I pass each day. Before the bush blossomed out, I had never noticed this modest plant. Intrigued, I walked closer and found—to my surprise—the same lantana I remember from Stonington! And now not in a small pot, but a sizable bush, growing wild.

An internet search revealed that the plant, lantana horrida, also bears the name lantana texana. And, yes, it is a native species—drought tolerant, salt tolerant, deer tolerant, and heat tolerant. The same plant purchased as a potted specimen grows wild in these parts. I will soon be seeking out lantana plants for my own garden—plants that are not only indigenous to the area, but also memories of dear friends in another place.

Wildflowers

During the springtime, Texas is alive with wildflowers—even in an extended dry period, as we have been experiencing. I remember reading a number of years ago that a two-volume work on wildflowers had been published and one volume was exclusively devoted to the wildflowers of Texas. I am not sure why wildflowers are so plentiful in Texas, but the natural displays have been supplemented in recent years by mass seedings. Of course, if there is no rain to sprout the seeds, they just lie dormant for another year.

Old timers tell us that this is not a good year for wildflowers—no surprise given the sparse rainfall—but nevertheless we are seeing a number of new and interesting displays along the roads we travel. We will be driving to East Texas next weekend to visit my brother, and we have chosen a circuitous route in hopes of increasing the possibility of viewing broad expanses of different species.

The doyenne of wildflowers is the late Lady Bird Johnson, who began the highway beautification projects when she was First Lady. After President Johnson left office, Lady Bird devoted much of her time and energy to wildflowers, and there is a major wildflower research center in Austin that bears her name. We have not been there yet, but hope to visit it soon.

In the meantime, as we drive along country roads and highways, we are keeping our eyes peeled for the most recent eruptions of roadside beauty.