Country Dirt Road Botanical Finds
Gaillardia aestivalis winkleri, white firewheel
White firewheel with a nectaring little yellow, Eurema lisa
This is a locally uncommon to rare grass, Gymnopogon ambiguus, bearded skeletongrass. I’ve only ever seen it over on the Big Sandy Creek Unit of the Big Thicket. I suspect it may be more common in some of these areas but people generally ignore grasses.
Oenothera rhombipetala, fourpoint evening primrose
A few weekends ago, Chris took a random dirt road that his GPS said to take to get to the Beaver Slide Trail in the Big Thicket. It was a pleasant drive, lots of interesting plants to look at outside the window. Then we entered a cleared area with different soils and I first noticed the primrose and then Chris busts out with excitement when he saw the white firewheel! He parked and turned off the car and we hop out to botanize along the roadside. The property around had been cutover in the last year or two and so everything was scrubby. I have no doubt there are other cool plants back on that property but since we didn’t want to trespass we didn’t stray far from the road. The white firewheel is definitely a county record and we’ll have to go back at some point to get a plant to press and voucher.
Lesson: take the back roads!
2 Comments
Automatic Garden
I guess the back roads worked.
shoreacres
I absolutely adore those white Gaillardia. They’re one of the very few flowers I’ve gone searching for; once I knew they existed, someone told me they could be found at the native plant center in Nacogdoches, and so it was. That’s when I learned about Sandylands, and etc. I’m so, so eager to get a chance to head that way again, now that I’m getting a bit caught up with my work.