Not a Brug, but beautiful anyway

I know these are not Brugs, but I just had to share a thread I started in the Texas forum. This year out pastures were blanketed with hundreds and thousands of Herbertia lahue var caerulea. For a week, the pastures turned bluish lavender for part of the day. It was spectacular. Usually the display is spread out over a month, but his year, it was concentrated into a week.

I love wildflowers. I spent the first year on the ranch photographing and cataloging all the wildflowers found on the ranch. When we purchased the ranch, the grass had been overgrazed and mesquite and weeds had taken over. Many of the wildflowers, as pretty as they were are toxic to cattle so they had to go. Since this is a working cattle ranch, I have had to make some hard choices. I've been trying to salvage patches of the non-toxic wildflowers, but some of them are so dense that they kill the grass. Last year it seemed that all the Lemon Balm seeds decided to germinate. It was hard to justify having acres of them even though walking or driving through it stired up a heavenly fragrance. According to my DH, if it's not grass it's a weed." I may have to settle for keeping the native grasses alive. Supposedly, after the pastures are renovated, I can seed some small patches with wildflowers. Wish me luck. There is a downside to having tall plants growing in the pastures — snakes can easily hide in it. We have a lot of water moccasins on the ranch because of all the water around. This afternoon, there was a dead copperhead, down by the front gate. The welder who is building the heifer corral must have run over it. That is the fourth copperhead found on the ranch. I have a problem with poisonous snakes!
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/838162/

Wow Betty! That is so awesome! They are beautiful flowers, and the land is just grand! Green with envy to have all that space and beauty. Thank you for sharing.

Betty, your description of the wild flowers was incredible, I could picture it in my mind. I also love wild flowers and would have such a hard time getting rid of them.

If you collect any seeds and have any to spare, I'd love to have some. And explain to me how you collect them so I can get more. Isn't there a wildflower distributer either by sales or through a philanthropic kind of place somewhere in Texas? It seems that I saw an article about a place that grows them and sells seeds. I can't remember where the place was, Fredricksburg maybe???

Anne

me too for seeds wow love it

Durio Nursery sells them 10 for $25.00. Too expensive
Pacific Bulb Society.org also sells them

Once the seed ripens, in about 1-1/2 months, the seeds are easy to collect since the seed capsule faces upward. Collecting is not the problem. It's getting them to germinate. I've read that the seed coat contains a chemical that prevents germination unless conditions are right. That chemical has to be washed off by rain a number of times. So seeds have to be sown outdoors — in a pot or in the ground — letting rains or watering wash off that chemical. What I have not been able to find is how long that process takes. Whenever I collect seed, I just toss it where I'd like it to grow. Of course the germination rate is probably low. Maybe sowing in a pot would improve the germinatiion rate.

Anne, ask me again sometime in June if you don't hear from me. With as many flowers as there were this year, there should be a ton of seed out there if I can just keep my DH from shredding before the seed ripen. He is known to do things like that. LOL

Marie, get back to me in mid to late June. If all goes well and I can keep DH occupied, I should have more seed.

Maybe those nurseries would come and take care of some of your surplus, and dig the ground for free! Seems several soaks, drying in between might work.

Too bad you can't leave strips of wild along one side of fence row.

Yeah, then they can sprig with a good feed grass like Tifton 85, which costs about $6,000.00 to sprig about 10 acres. LOL I wasn't able to find any information on how much water it took to get rid of the chemical. Whatever that level is, we meet it because there are millions of the little bulbs here.

My DH and I don't see eye to eye on the matter of wildflowers. He doesn't mind a few here and there, but Texas doesn't do things by half measure. Two summers ago, conditions were just right for Monarda citriodora (Lemon Balm), Monarda pectintata (Plains Beebalm), and Monarda punctata (Spotted Beebalm). They grow about 2' around here. We didn't get a few. We go acres of the stuff. They were so dense in one pasture that the grass underneath either died or went dormant. Traveling over that area was heavenly. The odor emitted by the crushed leaves was wonderfull, but we had to shred the stuff, cows don't eat broad leafed plants unless forced to and which could be toxic to them.