Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

Post April Showers at Burroughs Park

*blows dust off of WordPress*

Hello there! There comes a point when I take these long breaks from writing here (which I haven’t taken one this long in many years) that at some point I start having a contest with myself to see how long I can go without writing. A week? Can I make it two? Two? Why not go a month? Paired with the sporadic posting from the previous two months before, well, the blog hasn’t really been a priority. Honestly, it still isn’t but I figured I shouldn’t let it lay here floundering in the internet wasteland.

So, let’s go back to early April when we made an afternoon trip to Burroughs Park when rain thwarted our plans to head to a different park on the east side of Houston (I wrote a bit about that here). One odd thing we saw that I didn’t take a photo of for some reason were these weird piles of white powder that appeared to look either like powdered sugar or boric acid. It seemed to be attracting ants in the areas it was on the ground and there was some splattered on trees. It was weird.

There wasn’t a whole lot going on but I did really enjoy the water elm (Planera aquatica) swamp at the back of the park. It’s always a great spot for photography and reminds me a lot of pop ash and pond apple swamps in Florida.

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Texas Toadflax, Nuttallanthus texanus —reiterating my need for seeds of this to spread in the ROW and garden.

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Milk Thistle, Silybum marianum —escapee from cultivation. Carolina snailseed is trying to strangle it.

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Louisiana Sedge, Carex louisianica

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Lizard’s Tail, Saururus cernuus

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Cherokee Sedge, Carex cherokeensis

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Hemp Dogbane, Apocynum cannabinum —I thought this was a milkweed when I saw it but only redring milkweed (A. varigated) appeared close when I compared but that is not a wet species. Next up was dogbane which is a relative to milkweed.

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Cross Vine, Bignonia capreolata

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Nightshades, Solanum sp. —I thought this was a pequin at first but sorting through iNaturalist got me to a different genus and the nightshades. Not confident on what it is though.

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South American Skullcap, Scutellaria racemosa —A non-native but still rather pretty. This was fairly common along a cleared pipeline ROW.

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Southern Dewberry, Rubus trivialis —A random variegated sighting!

With that, maybe I’ll get back to sharing the rest of our spring trips, sights, and gardening soon.

2 Comments

  • Patrice La Vigne

    I, for one, hope you continue blogging for selfish reasons. But, I totally get it!!! I don’t know how you keep up with IG (2 accounts) so well and podcasting, so something has to go to the back burner.

    I have struggled with trying to let go of something. It seems to be our newsletter. I really love putting it together and getting it out there, but I just can’t. Better for my mental health to admit my limitations that create undue stress.

  • shoreacres

    Personally, I’m glad to see you blow the dust off! I’ve been a little distracted myself, so am behind in my reading, but I figure better late than never really does apply.

    First –I’m pretty sure you have Solanum carolinense, the Carolina or common nightshade. I’ve spotted both that one and Solanum triquetrum (Texas nightshade) in Galveston cemeteries and the Dudney Nature Center in League City, so they’re around. I ended up watching the life cycle of S. triquetrum in a pot on my balcony. It had to have been planted by a bird, but it was fun to document. The flowers of Texas nightshade form umbels and are smaller. Their berries are black, while those of the common nightshade are yellow. And that’s what I know about that.

    I love those photos of the trees and palmettos. Just beautiful. This past weekend I went to the Watson rare plant preserve north of Kountze. Have you been there? I combined it with another trip to Sandylands, and found a lot of unusual (to me) plants. Now, it’s my turn to whip myself into shape and do some posting about them!

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