April Showers Bring May Flowers….

But in Texas the Flowers are Here Early!

April is a fantastic month to be in Texas.  So much is happening!  Old friends are migrating across the Gulf of Mexico… not tired Spring Breakers but birds!  The weather is warming up but we can still enjoy cool mornings and nice breezes.  And the early spring rains have grown a carpet of color on all the roadsides and meadows.  Now, I’m not a plant person but I’m trying to learn.  I think learning about flowers is a nice way to dip my toe into the world of plant identification.  I don’t think I’ll even get to the point where I can be an expert on grasses but knowing a few individuals from each general plant group would be useful… and flowers should be an easy place to start. First, flowers are nice to look at and in general, are different enough to remember.  Second, different flowers (as with any plants) provide food and shelter for a variety of critters so if you are trying to attract or look for specific insects/critters, knowing their host plants is a step in the right direction.  Finally, it’s just cool to know more about the natural world. 

So I decided to travel around and take pictures of flowers, try to ID them, and learn a little bit more about the colors of the living carpets covering the ground here in the Brazos Valley in April.  Sounds easy, right?  Except in one small patch of grass there may be 5-6 different types of flowers!  I’m not talking about the big showy ones either, like Bluebonnets or Indian Paintbrush… what about all the smaller flowers?  It’s pretty amazing what’s around when you look under your feet.  Rick and I went to the Cox Cemetery outside of Milican (Rick was birding, I was stalking flowers), the fields around the George Bush Library, Brison Park, County Club Lake, and our own back yard.  After take “a few” pictures and then trying to ID flowers, I realized I had 18 different individuals named (maybe not the correct name, but it’s a start!) and 6 unidentified individuals.  Driving around over the weekend I kept seeing new flowers that I hadn’t seen elsewhere.  As much as I want to go and take pictures and try to ID them, I realized flower identification for a blog is much like a thesis… you have to know when to stop because it can go on forever! 

What you’ll need for flower identification:

1) A camera!  Using a good camera is great but any camera will do, really.  Some of the pictures I took were with my cell phone.

2) Some sort of resource for looking up your flowers.  I could only rely on Dwight’s calendar of Wildflowers of Lick Creek Park for so long!  His fantastic pictures allowed me to ID 3 of my unknowns… and now I know I have Scarlet Pimpernel in my backyard!  However, for the rest, I needed something else to use:

Websites:

This is a site where you select certain characteristics (# of petals, color, leaf shape, etc…) and hit “search”.  I liked it because you do not have to know the name of the flower to search:  http://www.realtimerendering.com/flowers/flowers.html

This is the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center’s image gallery.  You need to know the flower name in order to search however, there’s a lot of great information that goes along with the images:   http://www.wildflower.org/gallery/

Book:

Texas Wildflowers by Campbell and Lynn Loughmiller, 1999

A great book with nice pictures however, it did not contain all the flowers I needed.  It was a good place to start!

3) Patience!  Trying to get a good picture of a flower can be more difficult than it needs to be.  My biggest problem was that I’d find the perfect flower and then the wind would pick up.  Every picture I’d end up with showed a blurry yellow or white blob that was nowhere near the beautiful flower I was looking at.  I ended up doing the best that I could but if you’re going to photograph flowers, try to pick a non-breezy spot (ha ha, not as easy as it sounds!)  Also, some flowers can look amazingly similar!  Sometimes that picture you take just doesn’t show the right characteristics to correctly make an identification. 

Picture Time!

Below I present my attempts at identifying April wildflowers in the Brazos Valley.  I've included one common name for each as well as the latin name (taken from the Ladybird Johnson Wildlife Center website).  Hopefully, I at least got the species names correct... I can't guaranty the genus names!  Again, I am not a plant person so if I have misidentified something, please let me know in the comments section below (so that everyone can see, too!).  

Left: Blue-eyed Grass, Sisyrinchium sp., George Bush Library.  Right: Bluebonnet, Lupinus sp., George Bush Library.

Left: Chickweed, Cerastium arvense, Cox Cemetery.  Right: Cutleaf Evening Primrose, Oenothera laciniata, George Bush Library.  EDIT: From Monique: "Cerastium arvense"--this photo is of Arenaria drummondii--Drummond Sandwort 

Left: Indian Paintbrush, Castilleja indivisa, Cox Cemetery.  Right: Lyreleaf Sage?, Salvia lyrata, Brison Park.   EDIT: From Monique: Your Lyreleaf Sage is correctly identified  

Left: Phlox, not sure which type, Cox Cemetery.  Right: Pink Evening Primrose, Oenothera speciosa, Brison Park.  EDIT: From Monique: Phlox is Phlox cuspidate, Pointed Phlox

Left: Salvia?  Not too sure about this one, George Bush Library.  Right: Scarlet Pimpernel, Anagallis arvensis, My Backyard.  EDIT: From Monique: The "Salvia" is Orobanche ramose, Branched Broomrape, an invasive, parasitic exotic weed 

Left: Common Sneezeweed, Helenium autumnale, George Bush Library.  Right: Southern Dewberry, Rubus trivialis, George Bush Library.  EDIT: From Monique: The Helenium is probably Helenium amarum. Much more common locally. Weirdly, it is flowering in the spring this year. It's usually a summer and fall bloomer.

Left: Spiderwort, not sure which type, Brison Park.  Right: Texas Dandelion,  Pyrrhopappus pauciflorus, Country Club Lake.

Left: Texas Vervain, Verbena halei, George Bush Library.  Right: White Gaura? Not too sure about this one,  Gaura lindheimer, George Bush Library.  EDIT: From Monique: Gaura--this small and this early, it is probably G. brachycarpa. G. lindheimeri doesn't take off till later.

Left: Wild Onion,  Allium canadense, Country Club Lake.  Right: Wine Cup, Callirhoe digitata, Cox Cemetery.  EDIT: From Monique: Winecup--Callirhoe involucrate is by far the most common local species, but can't tell from the photo.

                 Unknowns!  I'm not sure what any of these are... so any ID help would be appreciated!

#1 Unknown. Cox Cemetery.  #2 Unknown. Cox Cemetery.  EDIT: From Monique: #1 is Hypoxis hirsuta, Yellow Star Grass.  #2 is Phacelia sp. Probably P. glabra, but would need to get my hands on the plant.

#3 Unknown.  George Bush Library.  #4 Unknown. Brison Park.  EDIT: From Monique: #3 is a Yellow composite in the front, a yellow Trifolium (clover) in the back.  #4 is Triodanis perfoliata--Venus' looking-glass

 #5 Unknown. Cox Cemetery.  #6 Unknown. My Backyard:  I thought this might be False Garlic/ Crow Poison but it really doesn't look like False Garlic in the resources I've used.   EDIT: From Monique: #5 is Yellow Wood Sorrel--Oxalis stricta.  #6 is one of our dwarf Blue Eyed Grass species, Sisyrinchium rosulatum. It comes in pink, lavender, yellow, and white.