Summer Wildflowers

Though Central Texas summers are always hot and usually dry, we have managed to get enough rain this year to bring about a few beautiful summer wildflowers.  Below are some of the more showy and abundant ones, and a couple of shy, harder to see beauties.

Summer Wildflowers

The Two-leaved Senna is a less common wildflower in our area.   White Evovulus is pretty common but hard to see because its flowers are only 3/8th to 5/8th inches wide and usually hide under grass or other plants.

Fernwood: Trip to Niles, Michighan

Posts have been lacking in the last few weeks because of a family trip we went on to North-eastern Indiana and Niles Michighan.  It's a beautiful part of the world to be in this time of year, with very tall (compared to Texas) trees all leafed out, and lots of wildflowers and wildlife.  So I thought I would post some photos from one of my favorite places ever, Fernwood Botanical Garden and Nature Preserve in Niles Michigan.  Besides acres of lovely gardens and arboretum, Fernwood has a nature preserve with trails through deep woods down to the banks of the St Joseph river.  Photo's of the woods and river don't really capture the deep peace and vibrant life of this place. They can only remind.  I'm so thankful there are places left like this!

Fernwood Botanical Gardens:

Forget-Me-Nots

Water Wheel 

Ostrich Fern

Northern Maidehair Fern 

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Green Frog

Missouri Violet

Oak, Maple, Tulip Tree woods

White Spiderworts

Blue Indigo with Bumblebee

Rhododendron

Campanulas

Foxglove

Foxglove

St Joseph River at Fernwood

Hill Country Water Gardens and Nursery Outing

I love visiting plant nurseries.  Especially locally owned nurseries that have made an effort to have beautiful display gardens.  It's like going to a public garden's with the plus of being able to purchase a bit of it and take it home if you want to.  Last Friday I got to visit one of my favorites, Hill Country Water Garden & Nursery. It is exemplary in this class of beautiful nurseries, and since I live just 15 minutes from their 5 acres gardens in Cedar Park, it's an easy enjoyable outing.  I love going there and looking at their beautiful display ponds and landscaping. They are definitely the place to go if you want to add any kind of water feature to your garden with all kinds of fountains, pump equipment, water plants and fish, plus the experts to help you design and maintain your feature.  They also have beautiful pottery, and garden accents and many landscaping plants for sale, including unusual ones you won't find at the chain nurseries. Many are natives to our area or adapted, so they are suitable for Xeriscape gardens. Enjoy these photos and go visit their website: http://hillcountrywatergardens.com/index/ for their address and more info about what they offer. Better yet, go see it for yourself.

Display pond

Large Display pond

Holding tank for fish that they sell.  These are the small Koi.
They also have a range of sizes in Koi and goldfish.

Classical lion head fountain.  This is my
daughters favorite.

Garden whimsey accessories.

After the Rain

Four nights ago, we got a "Severe Thunder Storm", as the weather service reports it, or what the locals  call a "Frog Strangler".  One to three inches will fall, sometimes in less than an hour, with high winds,  a spectacular lightening show and thunder that rattles the windows.  We are thrilled that it's raining again in Central Texas after several weeks of warm dry weather and the landscape starting to become rather crispy.  Today as I write this post, a slow steady rain is falling again with mild thunder.  And the plants are responding already. Starting in late spring and throughout the summer a small, dazzlingly white native lily called the Rain Lily, Cooperia pedunculata, pops up and blooms two to three days after every good rain storm.  Lawn sprinklers won't do the trick. It has to be real rain.  The longer the dry spell between the rains, the more abundant the flowers are.  You will see them along roadsides, out in open spaces and even in lawns.  Hope you can find some soon.  They only last a day or two.  

"After the Rain" 14.5 X 9.5 Watercolor

In the fall a very similar but smaller and more slender species of Rain Lily, Cooperia drummondii, will take it's place

Strange and Unusual Part 2

Today I'll feature a few more strange and unusual plants you can find in the Edwards Plateau Area. The first two plants below are both members in the Milkweed family and have similarities especially in their strange seed pods.  Milkweeds are the main food source for Monarch butterfly caterpillars. You can see a photo of the Monarch caterpillars feeding on Antelope Horns on April 26th post.  Milkweed plants produce alkaloids and other toxic chemicals that get eaten and stored in the caterpillars which in turn make the caterpillars and adult Monarch butterflies poisonous to potential predators.  A really strange growth habit of antelope horns is the way the seed pod forms.  Many flowers make up a ball shaped bundle at the end of each stem, but few of  these flowers mature into the large horn-shaped seed pod that curves as it grows and dries out to look like the antelope horns it's named after.  When the pod dries completely it opens and releases seeds attached to downy plumes that can be carried off by the wind

Antelope Horns, Spider Milkweed

Pearl Milkweed Vine, Netted Milkvine (named for the netted pattern on the flowers)  Notice the shiny pearl-like button 

in the center of each flower.  It is formed from fused stamen and pistil parts.

Seed pod of Pearl Milkweed Vine

Pearl Milkweed Vine

Heller's Marbleseed flowers

Heller's Marbleseed with white seeds

Heller's Marbleseed (above two photos) is a rare and unusual plant.  The flowers never open all the way, and the seeds look like tiny white marbles.  This plant is endemic to Texas, meaning it is found growing only in Texas, in fact only in three counties of Texas and Travis is one of them.  There are quite a few native plants of the Edwards plateau because of it's unique geology of plateau interspersed with canyons. and also because of it's location between major eastern and western regions of plant life.  Although this plant is rare and endemic to Texas it can be plentiful where it is found.

Oak Dodder, Tree Dodder

Oak Dodder is a parasitic flowering plant that grows on several native trees, including Plateau Live Oak, Ashe Juniper (Cedar) and Prairie Flameleaf Sumac. It is classified as a rare plant and seems to be uncommon in our area (the two don't always go together).  I don't see it growing every year, and haven't seen it yet this year.  I saw it two years ago when we had much more spring and summer rain.  This plant grows from seeds in the ground, then grows vines and tendrils up into trees and pierces their stems to obtain water and nutrients. The original connection to the ground dies off and only the vines in the trees remain.  Much more common Dodder species, that are much smaller and more delicate grows on herbaceous (not woody as in trees or shrubs) plants in our area and one was included in the April 9th post.. There it is growing on bluebonnets.

Strange and Unusual Part 1

Central Texas has some pretty strange looking flowering plants that are growing and/or blooming this time of year.  But you may have to take a closer look to find them or search off the beaten path.  Many of these have green or inconspicuous flowers and some are rare plant species.

These first two are Ball Moss and Spanish Moss.  They are not true mosses, but flowering plants. They are members of the Bromeliad (Airplant) Family.  Their flowers are small and inconspicuous, but if you look carefully you can see some hanging down in the first photo.  Both of these plants are epiphytes, meaning they use the trees they grow on just for hanging onto, and in no way harm or parasitize the tree.  Ball Moss is common in our area and found on our live oak trees, While spanish moss is not so common and is found more often on trees growing in deep canyons.

More of these strange plants will be featured in my next post including two more rare plants in Central Texas.

Spanish Moss (not a moss either but
a flowering plant)

Ball Moss (not a real moss)

Green Dragon

Yes, that really is this unusual and rare plants common name. Green Dragon's botanical name is Arisaema dracontium and the dragon reference comes from their strange looking flowers that have a long green spike arising from a hooded structure that reminded someone of a dragon's tongue.  I've never personally seen the flowers, but you can look at a photo of them on the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center's Native Plant Data Base.   The middle leaf group in the above photo is actually just one leaf that's oddly branched and divided.  This plant is listed as rare in our area and threatened or endangered in some states.

Velvet-leaf Gaura or Lizard-tail - a very tall weedy plant

Indigo Bush - member of the pea family as is
Texas Mountain Laurel and Bluebonnets

Snapdragon Vine, with bud and forming seedpod

Snapdragon Vine with flowers