Gardening with Texas Native Plants & Wildflowers, part 18

I am so sorry Linda, please do your best to save them they are very special trees.
Watering has been a very big chore around here too, I have three gardens besides my home garden, so it has bee quite a chore.

Ooh, nice! One of the San Antonio weathermen (Steve Browne, I think) took time out of his usual depressing hot & no rain forecast time to salute a native plant, Snow-on-the-Mountain, waxing almost poetic in his description of it as drought-tolerant and beautiful! Actually, they aren't doing so well around here...I have seen a few small plants where the water would run under the roads if it would ever rain. But he must have seen some where there has actually been more rain, because he showed fairly large, beautiful blooming plants! Kind of like these below from another year.
I'll try on the trees. Boy, I sure wish there were faucets all over the place. I can't reach all those trees, even with two hoses!

Very lovely Linda, I love it too.

I took advantage of a cloudy day to take a walk in a park in S.A. It's a park with a creek...dry now, of course. And probably set aside because of flooding. It wasn't pretty there, so many plants with no leaves or brown ones. And even the skeleton of a little fawn. Depressing, I regretted going....but then, in a desolate landscape, was beauty. Scarlet Musk Flower, which I hadn't seen in a long time. I couldn't find a pic I'd taken, so I googled. And I think I might know the guy who took this!
http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/21707977dFUpddUWJa?start=12

That is gorgeous Linda, I have seen that flower in pictures, but never in real life, it looks like a bouquet of red Four O'clocks, very lovely, I am sorry things are so dry down there, it is not a lot better here.
Josephine.

Oooo a brilliant red! Such an interesting and beautiful flower. First time I've heard about such a flower. Amazing that one would be there in such harsh conditions......like a silver lining! btw - Do you think you'll attend the fall CSRU in November? Lee

Lee, if you mean me, probably not! The Scarlet Musk Flower is amazing, blooming only in hot weather! I have a feeling it's one of those plants with the long tubers or deep tap roots. I've only seen it in certain parts of NW San Antonio...don't know exactly what it wants.

Sorry Linda,.....yes I meant you. Then next spring! Earlier this year,...Josephine gave me a Cottonleaf Passionflower at the Spring ETRU...and it's blooming right now......such a beautiful flower. I posted this picture in the Plantfiles.....and read your post as well. I'm really enjoying learning about so many different beautiful flowers here in Texas

Forgot to load the pic

Yes Lee, it is beautiful, the flowers are rather small and they close very early in the day in hot weather, but boy are they neat?
The fruit is also amazing and it is very strong grower.
Would you believe I propagated that one from a leaf? I only had one small vine at the time and didn't want to cut the growing tips.
Josephine.

A leaf? That's amazing, Josephine! I've never propagated anything from a leaf. That's a good plant. Mine eventually escaped to other parts of the back yard and also went back of the fence. But this summer...poor things hardly open the flowers in the morning before they close...when they even get enough water to bloom! Too hot! Mine don't make REAL fruit (for real passiflora fruits, flowers need to be pollinated from an uncloned plant of same species to make the edible fruit), but do form the red fruit-like things that look so cool. Maybe someday I'll put out a plant that isn't a clone of my own.
Oh...we have a chance of rain again...that would be SO nice!

I hope you do get that much needed rain, I will send some good thoughts.
Well, I know that they propagate some plants that have fleshy leaf stems, so I tried it and it did work, but it takes longer than fro a tip cutting.
Josephine.

Well...I was on my way to look up some flowers when I spotted this thread and couldn't resist!

I think this is Texas star. It was sitting all by itself.

This looks like it's gonna have some little pinkish flowers. Not sure what it is but I saw fields of pink flowers blooming along the road today.

blue waterleaf, Hydrolea ovate

I found this growing in very dry clay soil along a slope... blooms.

Don't know it's name yet.

Here's the leaf stem to the above flowers.

Hello Cristi, I think that last one looks like Desmodium.

Texas Persimmon, with fruit...very popular with wildlife these days! Birds peck it and I see scat often with those seeds. I throw some fruit over the fence from time to time so critters don't have to come in the yard to get it. Just put out corn and birdseed a little while ago. There was a flock of doves waiting out there for their seed.

Some kind of Commelina? This plant came home with a plant I dug up in East Texas somewhere.

Hello, I'm new to this forum. I'm gardening here in Bastrop Texas and trying to use natives as much as possible.

There are American beautyberry bushes growing wild all over my property and the surrounding area. When I first moved here the yard was a dense thicket of mostly yaupon holly under tall loblolly pines. We cleared the area under the pines leaving a few of the bigger beautyberries and they are in great color right now.



This message was edited Sep 13, 2009 7:59 AM

Hello bellzeybubba, and welcome to Dave's and this thread.
Beautyberries are so pretty you are lucky to have them grow naturally.
But don't forget that Yaupon holly can be very pretty too and also being an evergreen it is nice to see in the winter, the berries add a lot of color and the birds love them too.
I suppose you won't need to mulch with all those pines, also have a ready supply of mulch for all your other areas. You are very lucky.
Josephine.

Thank you for the welcome Josephine.

The yaupons can be pretty on occasion, there is one large female by the driveway we prune to keep looking nice. Mostly though we like them for the privacy screening at the edges of the yard, and I like knowing they are a source of caffeine should I ever run out of coffee :D.

The pine needles do make a nice mulch, but they take so long to break down, you can't count on them to add much organic matter. So in the ornamental beds once a year, in the winter, I scrape back the needles and apply organic fertilizer or compost and a layer of wood mulch. I don't even bother trying to grow a lawn though, we like how the pine needle lawn looks and besides it would be a losing battle!

Well, that sounds like a great plan.
We are trying to convert our front yard to all mulch, but have no pines, so we have to go with leaves from our trees and also the neighbors', sometimes we get a load of shredded tree mulch when they work in the neighborhood.
Keep up the good work, it sounds like you have a lovely place going there.
Josephine.

Yes, the Bastrop area is sometimes referrred to as the "lost pines" because the east Texas pines stop much farther to the east. So it's like an "island" of pines. I just love to go there and look at the wildflowers (at least, when I have a chance)...so different from my area. And conventional lawns are highly over-rated!
I went today to look around an area where an Agalinis species grows on the outskirts of San Antonio. Hoped to find Buckeye caterpillars there (Agalinis is a host plant), because the other species of Agalinis hasn't come up around my place as far as I know. No luck on the caterpillars, but there were several really small Tropical Buckeye butterflies flying around. Water Primrose was blooming in a wet area and wild asters. In drier parts of the area, both Lindheimer's Senna and Two-leaf Senna were blooming. And the Snow-on-the-Mountain was large and blooming...nectar must be good, because insects are always coming to it.

My Lindheimer's Senna is blooming now too, it sure is pretty and the leaves are so soft, feel like velvet.
Josephine.

Cenizo has been blooming like I've never seen before. What a fall! Now the blooms are falling and making a pretty mulch of fallen Cenizo blooms!

This message was edited Sep 28, 2009 7:32 PM

Wow Linda, it sure looks like God decided to reward you with lovely blooms after that terrible drought,
Congratulations!!!

Yeah Linda! The cenizos out here started blooming right after we got rain last week. Amazing riot of purples, lilacs and whites!!! Even the lantana has picked up again and the white brush/vara dulce - oh man oh man! That is in full bloom and the back fields smell heavenly!

~ Cat

Cat, those seeds you planted at the ranch should do real well also if this keeps up! I know what you mean about fragrance now...the whole yard smells good! Josephine, it does seem like a blessing! I'm still worried about my Bigtooth Maple, however. I looked at it yesterday and it seems like it has more brown on its leaves now than before.

Yes...lots of little sprouts when I checked on them this past weekend. Lots of deer tracks too but hopefully they will leave the teeny sprouts alone!!!

~ Cat

I saw a small tree loaded with little dark fruits the other day by the gate to the subdivision. I was thinking it might be a Gum Bumelia (Bumelia lanuginosa), but I've never seen one with fruit before this. I wouldn't mind having one that gets little fruits. I do have a couple on the property, but in fairly shady areas and they never really grow big enough to be trees.

That is really neat, those birds should be very happy.

I've had some doves that just want to live around my place since there's always food for them now. It's good to see food for wildlife elsewhere. I don't see many butterflies, however. Saw one Monarch yesterday between Helotes and San Antonio. Otherwise, I haven't seen any of those and peak migration is coming up soon.

I finally got around to going back to an area they were starting to clear recently in S.A., big development, many acres. Found some Talinum auranticum, Flameflower. I really need to get some of that out of there! This is one plant of it I have this year.

That is so pretty Linda, I have never seen it around here, I am so glad the drought is broken for you.

Very pretty LindaTX. So is your Cinezo.

I got a few flameflower plants dug up today, but I know now there's quite a few where I found them! Didn't have time to get that many today. Oh, and I now have a plant I'm told is a Texas Craglily, Echeandia texensis. A lady I trade plants with had some. I wish I knew more about what conditions it likes. Not much info available, but I saw this...looks amazing!
http://www.yuccado.com/displayone.php?ytitle=Echeandia%20texensis

What an interesting plant!

I read these posts and get plant envy! Wishing I had a larger yard to work in more planting areas. The dogs patch is the next area to be turned into a flower bed, hope he doesn't mind.
Cheryl