Will the Real Texas Bluebonnet Please Stand Up?

Nothing beckons spring in Texas quite like the carpets of bluebonnets on our miles and miles of highways. Texans are so enamored with their state flower that it’s not uncommon to see carloads of family members, pulled over on 75 mph highways, posing for pictures in a sea of brilliant blue flowers. With the advent of social media, we wait for the ubiquitous Easter photos of kids taken in a local patch. My son and his peers are now of the age where it’s “not cool” to pose for silly photos, so I am relegated to admiring my friends’ photos of their sweet, younger children.

My son poses in his grandpa's bluebonnets.
My dad collected these seeds from my great grandmother's patch
and grew them in our yard at my childhood home. 

One of my favorite memories as a child was spending Easter Sunday in my great grandmother’s bluebonnet patch. Family legend has it that she transplanted three bluebonnets from somewhere, and by the time I came along had more than an acre full that grew melodiously alongside Drummond phlox. She and my great grand father bought 100 acres in northwest Harris county more than a century ago, and until recently most of my extended family lived on divided up parcels.

Easter was a time for us all to come together, eat chicken and dumplins and hunt Easter eggs in the bluebonnet field. When I was still quite small, the ladies would still wear long dresses and old-fashioned sunbonnets and we’d take turns posing for generational photos in that lovely field of flowers.

In the photo on top, my great grandmother and I pose in our Easter dresses in her bluebonnets. On bottom, my husband and his grandmother inspect their bluebonnets in Tyler County.

It was many years before I realized there was a difference between the bluebonnet from home (and those that I find in East Texas) and the bluebonnet that is most thought of as the symbol of Texas. I grew up with the sandyland bluebonnet, and that is the species that most commonly occurs in the sandy soils of southeast Texas. It's a bit less intensely colored, and lacks the white tip of the one we most likely associate with, the Texas bluebonnet.



Stepping back into history to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the idea for states to adopt a state flower came to life. State legislatures were encouraged to choose the floral symbol that best represented their state. The cotton boll was promoted as the “white rose of commerce” by businessman and legislator Phil Clement. John Nance Garner, who would later become the vice-president under Franklin D. Roosevelt, championed the flower of the prickly pear cactus. A campaign that would earn him the nickname of Cactus Jack. Finally, someone with sense and botanical taste, legislator John Green of Cuero, proposed the bluebonnet. The idea didn’t really take hold until the ladies got involved. The Texas Chapter of the Colonial Dames of America stepped in, pulled out their big guns and showed the Texas Legislature just what they needed to see to adopt the bluebonnet as the state flower in 1901.

At the time, the legislature designated the sandyland bluebonnet, Lupinus subcarnosus, as the state flower. There are actually 6 species of bluebonnets in Texas, with the Texas bluebonnet, Lupinus texensis, being the most recognized. The sandyland bluebonnet was considered the less showy of the two species, and is certainly less commonly occurring. In 1971, the Texas Legislature amended the resolution to include the Texas bluebonnet “and any other variety of bluebonnet not heretofore recorded.” Which means we technically have 6 state flowers, at least until another species is identified. I am eager to find the sundial lupine, Lupinus perennis, that occurs uncommonly in deep southeast Texas. I’ve seen one in the wild, but like good and bad hair days, this particular specimen wasn’t living up to it’s potential.

Lupinus subcarnosus, the sandyland bluebonnet lacks the white tip of the more familiar Texas bluebonnet.

Bluebonnets were named for their resemblance to sunbonnets worn by pioneer women, they were also known by a few other names. The Spanish called them el conejo, which means "the rabbit," for the white tips of the flowers resembling the white tail of a cottontail rabbit. Natives and early settlers believed that buffalo and cattle ate them, and called them buffalo clover. I imagine any state legislator would have a hard time trying to proprose something called buffalo clover, or something named after a varmint as the floral representation of their state.

It was many years before I realized there was a difference between the bluebonnet from home (and those that I find in East Texas) and the bluebonnet that is most thought of as the symbol of Texas. I grew up with the sandyland bluebonnet, and that is the species that most commonly occurs in the sandy soils of southeast Texas. It's a bit less intensely colored, and lacks the white tip of the one we most likely associate with, the Texas bluebonnet. On closer inspection, the individual florets of the sandyland bluebonnet are much more loosely spaced than the ones more tightly clustered on the flower stalks of the Texas bluebonnet. Once you see them side by side, they're pretty easy to tell apart.

Despite it’s designation as the “less showy” of the two prominent Lupinus species of Texas, the sandyland bluebonnet will always be my favorite, probably for sentimental reasons but that's just fine with me.

A honeybee forages for nectar in the Texas bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis).  

Discovering Native Orchids

Orchids are a plant that I only have a passing interest in. They are exotic and spectacular when in bloom, somewhat dull when not, and can be fussy to coax back into bloom. They need light - but not too much, water, not too much nor too little, a moderate climate – not too hot or too cold, and the right growing medium water-retentive yet quick-draining. Admittedly, those requirements are not too much to ask for the reward they offer when in bloom, but I just don’t have time for all of those details. Who has time for fussy plants? Not me. At least not until I retire, but I may have been bitten by the orchid bug!

Spiked crested coralroot

Last July, on one of our many trips into the surrounding Pineywoods led by botanist, and SFA alum, Peter Loos, I encountered my first native, terrestrial orchid. Peter is hard to keep up with sometimes, as he knows more botany and botanical names than many people combined, and has an internal map in his brain that rivals any compass or GPS device ever made. On this particular trip to the Davy Crocket National Forest, we were accompanied by botanist Joe Liggio who coauthored, with his wife Ann, and photographed for “Wild Orchids of Texas,” so I knew we were looking for something special: the spiked crested coralroot orchid, Hexalectris spicata. Talk about a gateway drug! Finding something like this in the wild will take you to your knees and take your breath away in the same instant. 

Since that first encounter, Peter has introduced me to at least nine more of our native orchids. Some are unassuming, some are curious, and some are overwhelmingly magnificent. But if tropical orchids are fussy, our native orchids are near impossible. As a whole, most require specialized pollinators or extremely specific habitats in order to survive and reproduce – oftentimes growing in conditions that are impossible to replicate in the nursery or garden setting. For example, spiked crested coralroot are achlorophyllous and mycoheterotrophic. That means they don’t have chlorophyll in order to photosynthesis energy, and instead obtain nutrients from mycorrhizal fungi present in specific soil conditions. There is really no way to replicate these conditions outside of their natural habitat. Additionally, they are highly prized by collectors and are often victim to poaching. For all of these reasons, native orchids are a group of plant that I will never, ever collect from the wild – even if I have the great fortune of finding them on my own property. 

Rose pogonia

I’ve encountered several orchids in hillside seeps where pitcher plant are often found. Orchids here are in danger due to habitat loss, largely from development of forest land or fire suppression that allows overgrowth of taller woody vegetation that crowds out the herbaceous layer. Growing conditions consist of very acidic, nutrient poor, fine sands with an underlay of impervious clay that allows groundwater to seep to the surface. Even in summer when the surface soil looks dry, the subsurface is often still moist. The plant diversity here is astounding, yet rare due to the infrequent occurrences of these specific growing conditions. In mid-May, I caught the last blooms of the rose pogonia, Pogonia opiohlossoide, with its soft pink flowers that were hard to see until your eye is trained. At the end of May, I was fortunate to experience the tuberous grass pink, Calopogon tuberosus var. tuberosus, is the first to bloom in late May and early June. Three to 10 bright pink flowers can occur on each stalk, opening from bottom to top. As we turn to the heat of August, the orange fringed bog orchid, Platanthera ciliaris, shows it’s brilliant, frilly orange flowers and often grows in or near sphagnum moss. The snowy orchid, Platanthera nivea, is also recorded in bogs, but my first encounter was in a coastal prairie in Harris County. These showy white orchids, almost resembling white Roman hyacinths, were sprinkled all throughout this wonderfully preserved space.

Tuberous grass pink

Orange fringed bog orchid

Snowy orchid

Cranefly orchid

Some native orchids, especially in the shade of our pineywoods, are easy to miss. The large whorled pogonia, Isotria verticillata, is actually a tiny thing best appreciated on hands and knees. Three long brown sepals surrounding the flower give this orchid its exotic appearance, but are easily camouflaged with surrounding leaf litter. They bloom near the end of March. The foliage of the cranefly orchid, Tipularia discolor, is spectacularly easy to find in spring with its large crinkly leaves, often with dark purple spots. If ever in question, simply turn the leaf over and the solid purple underside will serve as confirmation. However, the foliage goes dormant before tiny purple-green flower spikes appear in late summer. They are not showy and easily blend in with the surrounding forest. The hardest to find, in my opinion, is the southern twayblade, Neottia bifolia. On a good day, plants in bloom might reach a hand’s height, but the two tiny leaves that occur near or at ground level are nigh bigger than a quarter. Although they can produce up to 25 flowers per plant, I’d be generous if I called the purplish-brown flowers and stem “tiny.” 

 

Whorled pogonia

Finally, there are plants that are simply more fantastic in person than you could realize. That moment you find what you are looking for, and it seems as if the clouds part and heavenly sunbeams stream down highlighting your flower. You can nearly hear the imaginary choir singing a note of joy and wonder. That moment happened for me earlier this year at my first encounter with a Kentucky lady’s slipper orchid, Cypripedium kentuckiense. These flowers are large and rather conspicuous with a large, yellow bowl-shaped labelleum (modified petal in orchids), set off in contrast by large, reddish sepals and petals. They prefer rich, moist, open woodlands and are listed as globally vulnerable due to limited range and loss of habitat. You can actually find Kentucky lady’s slippers for sale, but please make sure they are sourced from tissue culture or from a garden specimen rather than wild collected. 

Kentucky lady's slippers

I’ve often heard that the devil is in the details, meaning things should be done thoroughly and thoughtfully, and that’s precisely the way these beauties were designed. There are reportedly 54 species of orchids native to Texas. I’m not foolish enough to think I can see them all in my lifetime, but at least half of those are in East Texas and I’m going to give those a shot!

Provenance

In a guest lecture I recently presented for a plant propagation class, I was explaining the importance of provenance in graft compatibility within certain species like red buds. Sometimes, even though the plant is the same, it's origin makes all the difference in the world. There are issues that arise when trying to graft a red bud from the southeastern U.S. with a red bud from Oklahoma. It makes sense when you look at the climate and soil in either of those locations: they are remarkably distinct, and it makes sense that the red bud would adapt and evolve to the conditions it's been dealt.

In trying to explain provenance to the class, I looked over and saw one of the students that works for me. Adelle is from the island of Granada. She has a beautiful smile and the most mellifluous speaking voice. In the months from October through May, she is bundled in long pants and sweaters. Now being a good, southern garden girl, I don't exactly sport the shorts and flip flops until it's at least 75F, but Adelle will be in full-on winter layers until it's at least 72F. The high temperatures in Granada hover around 84F and the lows at 75F. Year. Round. Adelle's provenance makes her a little sensitive to a climate outside of that zone of paradise. Welcome to Texas. 

Adelle sowing seeds from peppers her mom sent.

Adelle is generous in sharing her provenance with us. She shares delicacies that her mother makes, seeds from trees that would want to layer up in sweaters here too, and gifts that reflect the culture of her home. And then there's the rum punch. I'm entirely convinced that rum punch is served for breakfast, lunch and dinner on Granada. I just might have to go check that out.

Today, Adelle's surprise mailed from home, was a bag of peppers that looked like habañeros. Um...thanks, I think. In reality they are Granada seasoning peppers. A mild-mannered version of the scotch bonnet, these peppers have an intense, fruity flavor with hints of citrus and pineapple. They are infused throughout  Granadian cuisine, and just happen to represent the colors of their flag when in varying stages of maturity. She cleaned and then sowed the seeds; I can't wait to grow them here!

Mild-mannered Granadian Seasoning Peppers

That's the thing about gardeners. Regardless of your own provenance, you still maintain a remarkable passion for the plants you may only visit or be introduced to from a friend from a foreign land. Native plants should remain the staples in our gardens, but isn't it fun to try something that comes straight from paradise?

Sure you can find these seeds for sale on the internet, but the plants I grow in the future will have a story. And they will have a connection to a young lady, who just briefly, layered on a few sweaters, braved our Gulf Coast winters and put the island of Granada on my bucket list.

Real Estate in the Garden

As much as I love plants, I do descriminate.  It's not that my biophilia is lacking, it's that my real estate is.  By today's neighborhood standards, our just over half-acre lot could be considered expansive - I'm so grateful that we don't butt up to our neighbors - but for the Southern Garden Girl, every inch counts!  And even though we intend to take out nearly every bit of lawn, I really want the garden space we create to work hard.

I wish I could be satisfied with big sweeps of the same plant; I truly do value repetition in the scope of garden design.  It's just that there are too many cool plants to invest a lot of space in only a few.  And mind you I don't expect plants to bloom 12 months out of the year; I simply think they should earn their space in my real estate.  

THE GOOD: I sit in my backyard writing this and looking at many of the good guys.  Alternanthera dentata 'Little Ruby' is a perennially favorite annual of mine with compact, plum-purple foliage.  It echoes the velvety purple flowers on my Salvia splendens 'Ablazin' Purple.'  The latter of which is a much improved selection that has bloomed since I planted it in early spring.  Salvia splendens usually gives up around the first of July.  November happens in 3 days.  

I'm watching a delicate bumble bee ballet on the Agastache 'Blue Fortune' and enjoying how the Brazilian button bush (Centratherum rubrum) pulls my eye to an excalmation of 'Senorita Rosalita' cleome both of which have bloomed non-stop since spring.  

I did say that I don't require blooms lasting all 12 months.  I love my giant 'Super Nova' angel's trumpet that only flushes it's fragrant flowers when I go out of town - without fail.  I can't do without the night blooming jasmine that erupts into fragrant blossom just when I need it.  I will always love coneflowers even though I don't seem to have the right touch with them.  And that crazy-giant milkweed, Calotropis gigantea, who is quite a grinch when it comes to flowers, but more than makes up for it in architectural awesomeness.  

THE BAD: Ugh. I really don't like bad-mouthing anyone, but what do you do when a plant takes up a good portion of your valuable real estate, and you wait for it... and wait for it... and wait for it.. and... is that all??!!??  Here is what I'm giving up on this year.  Iochroma.  They are spectacularly photographed in close-ups, but what no one wants to tell you is that the blooms are entirely lost in the foliage.  I was hoping that the short days of fall would rectify this, but I'm still under-impressed.

Next is Solanum wendlandii.  I will give this beauty another chance in an assuredly more sunny location, because everything I read indicates five solid months of bloom.  This robust vine has decent foliage texture, but it's nothing to write home about.  The HUGE clusters of light purple flowers would be amazing if I didn't have to beat back the foliage to see them.  Did I mention the spines?  Ouch.  I will try this vine one more time in a full-sun-blazing, no-shade-around situation because I am dying to see what it looks like covered in those lovely flowers.  

Lastly, and perhaps this one is due for a move as well, is the Callicarpa longissima.  This beautyberry's flowers are beyond cool, but are on the small size when the overall size of the shrub is taken into account.  I planted this too close to a Muskogee crape myrtle, and the Callicarpa is giving it a run for it's money!  I'm still a little enamored with this unusual beautyberry, and am grateful that there is a specimen at my work, that has plenty of room, so I can continue to admire and evaluate should I decide to actually give it the axe.  Which I'm leaning towards. 

I always joke that my job is to "kill plants," but in all reality I evaluate them for beauty, usefullness and overall performance.  When real estate is valuable, choose plants that really work for you - in one way or another.  Life is short, and we should enoy every bit of it, AND every inch of it.

        

Am I blue? You'd be too...

     It's been too long since my last post.  Life can get in the way sometimes, but I've been feeling that itch to write for a few weeks now. After an amazing day with the Texas Longleaf Pine Implementation Team on our forestland, I knew it was time to get back in the game. I left the meeting inspired; dreaming of longleaf pine, wild game habitat, prescribed burns and terrestrial orchids.

 
     My drive home was accompanied by a host of roadside wildflowers including stunning white fleabane, cheerful yellow tickseed, new-to-me 'old plantation,' pretty pink evening primrose, umbelicious Queen Anne's lace, and an amazingly dark-pink prairie phlox.

     Well who in their right mind would pay attention to speed limits with that botanical fracas in process?  Not this 74 mph in a 55 mph zone kind of gal!  Talk about blue as well as red!  (Note that the speed limit in rural Texas is often 75 or 80 mph, so I'm not really a speed demon given my clocked speed of 74 mph) Looking into the eyes of a $298 moving traffic violation is enough to make anyone blue, and you can imagine that dampened the spirit of the rest of my journey home. 

If the cuttings of this Phlox root, I'm calling it 'Speed Trap'

     Luckily, I had plenty of things waiting to cheer me up at home. My 9 year-old son is learning to mow the grass, and had mowed both the front and back yards.  My husband cleaned up the fence line by our driveway and had managed not to destroy my Byzantine gladiolus that perfectly complement the also still intact Pam's Pink honeysuckle. And despite the blue state of my mood, blue is my favorite color and we had a good many blue clematis blooming in our landscape waiting to turn my bad mood around.

What a great kid! Now if he'll just do the dishes too!

     I am completely baffled by clematis, but have managed to grow three varieties quite successfully with ignorance and neglect.  The prettiest right now is a variety called 'Cezanne.'  I meant to train it on the mailbox post, but neglected to do so when early spring got so busy.  It has since made a beautiful mound at the base of our mailbox, and is blooming it's head off!  I did not originally have it's name, so I texted my friend Felicia who works at the nursery where I acquired it.  Felicia kindly responded to my text in detail at 5:30 a.m. this morning!  :-0  

Clematis 'Cezanne'

   

The next treasure I found was the very first blossom on the Sapphire Indigo clematis from Conard-Pyle.  This one is actually meant to be a ground cover, but I haven't had it long enough to evaluate it for that purpose. I can say that the color is a phenomenal shade of iridescent indigo, and I can't wait for the rest of the buds to open!

Clematis 'Sapphire Indigo'

     And backtracking a bit, I fondly recall the delicate fragrance of 'Sugar-Sweet Blue' that I received from a Facebook friend that I met in one of the professional horticulture groups.  This group had a gathering at a conference, and Dan Long of Brushwood Nursery in Athens, Georgia gave us all a clematis to take home.  This is the second spring for my 'Sugar-Sweet Blue' and I was knocked off my feet with the abundance of wonderfully sweet, fragrant blooms at the first of April.  The only negative I can relate about this healthy vine is that the petals go straight up your nose when you bend in too close to experience the sweet scent.  

Clematis 'Sugar-Sweet Blue'

     Suddenly, blue doesn't seem such a forlorn color to feel. It's soft, and cool, and pleasant smelling. It greets you quietly, and calmly, and perfectly after a $298 moment of angst. And so far, I haven't managed to kill the three clematis in my garden - I'd call that a victory any day.  

To purchase:

Sugar-Sweet Blue, http://www.gardenvines.com/small-flowered-clematis/clematis-sugar-sweet-blue.html

Cezanne, http://www.gardenvines.com/large-flowered-clematis/clematis-cezanne.html

Sapphire Indigo, http://www.plantdelights.com/Clematis-Sapphire-Indigo-for-sale/Buy-Sapphire-Indigo-Bush-Clematis/

Butterflies in the Summer Garden

Butterflies may be one of the least effective pollinators, but they sure are the prettiest.  Within the last two weeks, the gaudiest members of the butterfly family have been active in my little neck of the woods.  The swallowtails have been out in force, reminding me of God's generosity - a gift to be treasured.  There's an area where I work that is planted with masses of garden phlox and mealy cup sage, and it's simply alive with butterflies, especially swallowtails, and a host of other happy pollinators. This area is known as the healing garden and was created in memory of a little girl who tragically left this earth too soon.  Could there be a more fitting symbol of transformation, rebirth and resurrection than a butterfly?  What a gentle reminder of God's amazing grace.

Black form of a female eastern tiger swallowtail

  Obviously swallowtails are my favorite as I continually mention them, but who would disagree?  I love trying to photograph them and watching their unique personalities emerge.  The eastern tiger swallowtail nectars deliberately, opening it's wings slowly and keeping them wide as it investigates each individual flower.  The spicebush and pipevine swallowtails move at a faster pace making it somewhat hard to get a good photo and even harder to tell them apart.  My colleague Greg gave me a great clue the other day: spicebush are extra spicy and therefore have two rows of orange spots underneath their lower wings while pipevine swallowtail only have one row of spots.  The giant swallowtail greedily gulps nectar, fluttering its wings so rapidly as it flits from one flower to the next it hardly sits still long enough for a decent picture.  The zebra swallowtail is so elusive that I'm not sure if it nectars at all as I seem to only find them hovering over flowers almost if they are absorbing nectar rather than sipping it.

Eastern tiger swallowtail nectaring on garden phlox

Attracting butterflies is a snap.  Plant nectar plants in large groups or sweeps, in plenty of sunshine, to catch the eye of a fluttering butterfly.  Nix the pesticides - including organic ones - as butterflies and caterpillars are quite sensitive.  Provide puddling areas with dampened sand, and provide shallow dishes of rotten fruit.  And by golly, provide host plants for larvae - caterpillars prove to be picky little creatures who host on quite specific plant species.  Swallowtail larvae are no different, and each of the different species has it's own particular diet.

Eastern black swallowtail caterpillar munching on fennel

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

~Nathaniel Hawthorn

 

The rapid fluttering of a giant swallotail

Pipevine swallowtail on Peter's Purple bee balm

The zebra swallowtail seems to say "Catch me if you can!"

Zebra swallowtail puddling on sand at an east Texas lake