Wildseed Farms, Fredericksburg

Last weekend we went to Fredericksburg to celebrate my daughter's birthday.  On the drive from Austin on HWY 290 we stopped at Wildseed Farms, 7 miles east of downtown Fredericksburg.  We were delighted to find it having it's best spring blooming season that I've ever seen.  Wildseed Farms is the largest working wildflower seed production farm in the US and a big tourist destination (Yup, even bus-loads of flower-lovers come here).  The display gardens, trial plots and flower fields are stunning this year.  If the photos below of the red corn flowers look like their glowing, it's because they actually look that brilliant in person.  We also enjoyed the outdoor seating area surrounded by show gardens and the nursery, while eating tasty frozen snacks.  The homemade soft serve peach ice-cream is a must.  And yes there is a gift shop, actually three, that sell more than just the wildflower seeds.

Entrance to Meadow

Field of Red Corn Flowers

Red Corn Flower

Red Corn Poppies

Butterfly on Bluebonnet

Passion Flower in the butterfly garden

Butterfly Garden

California Poppies

Display Garden with stream and Water Lilies

Corn Poppy color variations

Autumn Sages

Scarlet Flax

Baby's Breath

Desert Verbena

Bachelor Buttons

Living Easy Rose

Rocket Larkspur

Rocket Larkspur

Iceland Poppies

Iceland Poppy

Color variations of Bluebonnets including
the maroon  Alamo Bluebonnet

Salvia, Blue Victoria

Claret Cup Cactus

Garden and plant nursery around outdoor dinning area

Pottery Yard

Pink Evening Primrose

Composites: Daisies, Indianblankets, Asters, etc, etc. etc.

  

           In this post I'm featuring Composite flowers (Aster Family) because they are really taking over dominance of the Central Texas landscape this time of year.  Everywhere you go you will see them, and along many roadsides and fields you'll see masses of these flowers.  You will probably be familiar with the garden representatives of these in the sunflowers, carnations, marigolds and dandelions.  

          The reason why there are so many kinds and such great quantities of these is because of the highly successful flower structure this family employs.  Although you may think you are looking at a single flower, each flower head really has dozens to hundreds of individual flowers.  Thus the name: Composite. I've included a few diagrams of flower parts to help explain this efficient structure.  

           First are two diagrams of regular simple flowers to get you familiar with flower part names. Then, follows a diagram of a Composite flower, using the beloved Indian Blanket.  

          Many composites are nick-named by botanists the DYC's, which stands for Darn Yellow Composites, because there are so many that are yellow and look very similar that it can be difficult to decipher which exactly a specimen is. 

The Simple Flower

The Composite Flower

Each flower head has many tiny individual flowers   

There are two types of flowers: 

Ray flowers that carry the petal like structure (like rays of the sun coming out of the suns disk)
Disk flowers in the flowers center.

Key Features of Composite Flower structure:

Both Ray and disk flowers have all the flower parts: Stamens (male parts) and Pistils (female parts). These parts are compact, partly fused and streamlined so that many flowers can fit in one head. Lots of flowers = Lots of seeds.The disk flowers don't open all at once, but in many species, the outer disk start opening first, then in time, the opening process moves inward. This insures pollination of at least some of the florets as they are all maturing over an extended time. Some Composite flowers species have only ray flowers, some have only disk, and many have both.


The Pics below are of Aster family members blooming in April/May in the Texas Hill Country. Other species of composites will not start blooming till the summer or fall.

               Composite Examples

Prairie Fleabane

Fiveneedle Pricklyleaf

Blackfoot Daisy

Dwarf White Aster

Greenthread  (Thelesperma filifolium)

Damianita

Engelmann Daisy

White Barbara's Buttons, Puffballs.  This composite
has no ray flowers only disk flowers

Greenthread  (Thelesperma filifolium)

Texas Star

Indian Blanket, Firewheel

White Rocklettuce. This composite has mostly
ray flowers or ray-like flowers

               

Shrubby Boneset

Texas Thistle

Texas Thistle

Texas Highways tour on Easter

Crested Pricklypoppy, Whiter Pricklypoppy

Yesterday my family and I went on a car ride around the Texas Hill Country to see the wildflowers while they are still lasting.  We drove from Cedar Park to Marble Falls, then over to Llano on Highway 1431.  Then down state highway 16 past the Enchanted Rock turnoff, to Willow City Loop.  Willow City Loop is a narrow country, often one lane road that has beautiful scenery and wildflowers.  It's well worth the trip.  Flowers are still very abundant there in Willow City and all along the Texas highways we rode on, especially White Pricklypoppies as you can see by the numbers of photos they appear in.

Crested Pricklypoppy, White Pricklypoppy

  White Pricklypoppies truly are in the poppy family, even though the leaves and stems look like they should be thistles, with all those spines and prickly leaves.  True thistles, however, are in the daisy or aster family (Composites).  I'll do a post on the aster family later this week as they are coming out more and more as the season progresses.  But for this post you can see representatives in the Indian Blanket, the Lazy Daisy, and the Engelmann Daisy.  Overall, it was a very joyful and peaceful trip.  Driving (or walking) mile after mile past beautiful wildflowers waving in the wind always takes me out of my ordinary cares into a world of wonder and grace.  Very fitting for Resurrection Sunday.

    

Indian Blanket, Firewheel

Indian Blanket, bud

Bluebonnets and White Pricklypoppy

Bluebonnets and White Pricklypoppies

  

Very tall Bluebonnet

Dodder on Bluebonnets.  Dodder is a true parasite:
A flowering plant with fine threads that wind around
and bore into another plant species stems and take away water and nutrients.

Winecup

White Pricklypoppy and Indian Blanket

        

Crested Pricklypoppy, White Pricklypoppy

Blue-Curls, Caterpillars 

Drummond Phlox, Annual Phlox

Blue-Curls, blossoms and leaves

Texas Paintbrush

Peppergrass

Peppergrass; fills this field tinting it yellow green

Engelmann Daisy

             

Lazy Daisy, Arkansas dozedaisy