Outdoors
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Weekend at Ivy’s
A few months ago I was on the Texas Land Conservancy website looking into a property I wanted to get onto near Angelina National Forest. Unfortunately that property was closed to the public and so I went digging into their website a little more to find out just what public lands they had available that I could get onto. That’s how I ended up coming across the Spring Weekend at Ivy’s. I emailed the TLC first to ask if their $50 pricing included the entire weekend for the whole family and it did! I sent the link to Chris and after a brief conversation I officially paid the money and…
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Narrowleaf Goldshower, Galphimia angustifolia | Wildflower Wednesday
Let’s rewind to July 2021 and a hike at Pedernales Falls State Park for today’s Wildflower Wednesday. We were there to celebrate my birthday weekend and if I recall the hike was rather cloudy, which was probably good considering the heat. When I found this flower back along the Wheatley Trail near the property fenceline, I thought it looked very similar to a tropical gardening plant I knew in Florida, thryallis. Which makes sense because they are both in the genus Galphimia! There’s not a lot of information online about the species but you can find it throughout the Texas Hill Country from Austin to San Antonio and scattered west…
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The Peace of a Tent
Over the weekend we drove up to Elkhart to camp at a new-to-us location, the Ivy Payne Preserve. It’s a Texas Land Conservancy property, donated to the TLC by Ivy Payne in the late 1980s. I stumbled into the whole ordeal in early March when looking into a different TLC property to see if I could access it (I couldn’t) and decided to click around to see what other properties they might have available that were open to the public. Enter the Ivy Payne Preserve and the Weekend at Ivy’s campout! It turned out to be a wonderful weekend, full of meeting new people, hiking a rarely visited property, and…
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Cemetery Botanizing – Tillis Prairie Cemetery | 3
Oxalis dillenii Carolina anemone, Anemone caroliniana – so glad I got to enjoy these this spring! More prolific than I expected. Missouri violet, Viola missouriensis The non-native largelower sorrel, Oxalis debilis Sidewalk firedot, Xanthocarpia feracissima – I think. Cemeteries are a great spot to find interesting lichens! Bulbous woodrush, Luzula bulbosa – I’m beginning to really love this plant and wish I saw it sold in garden centers. Beaked cornsalad, Valerianella radiata Another Missouri violet Stemless spiderwort, Tradescantia subacaulis What remains of a poor armadillo. It has been a couple of weeks since I’ve done any cemetery botanizing (or naturalizing!) and I’m feeling it a bit. Twice a week physical…
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Butterflies at Medina River Natural Area
Little yellow, Pyrisitia lisa Dainty sulphur, Nathalis iole Orange sulphur, Colias eurytheme Gray hairstreak, Strymon melinus Reakirt’s blue, Echinargus isola Orange skipperling, Copaeodes aurantiaca Gray hairstreak, Strymon melinus Ailanthus webworm moth, Atteva aurea Vesta crescent, Phyciodes graphica We went to San Antonio for a weekend getaway back in January with no real plans other than going to the zoo, eat at La Gloria on the Riverwalk, and going to the Alamo. I hadn’t been to the Alamo since I was in high school and I don’t know if Chris recalled when he had been, and it was Forest’s first time. We had driven by it several years ago but now…
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Cemetery Botanizing – Corgey Cemetery | 2
Back to some more botanizing of cemeteries today! This one is a very tiny family cemetery, with one or two more recent burials. On aerial imagery this area is mostly undeveloped, some farm field and thick pine forests but when I arrived I found one of the pine forests clearcut for a housing development. “Progress” continues onward… There were a lot of Carolina anemones (Anemone caroliniana) here! I think I still love the tenpetal anemones better but I do love seeing these! And then I found something interesting! The leaves were tall and they had what looked like sporangia on the back, which led me to thinking this was some…
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Big Sky Country
A week in the Davis Mountains, spring this time instead of our usual Thanksgiving. Which meant warmer, but much windier weather, and the beginning of spring blooms for plants we haven’t gotten to see bloom before. All the warm weather and early blooms will be dusted with snow this weekend as a cold front came through last night, our last night. The city of Fort Davis was preparing for the storm by salting the roads and brought out a big truck with some weird thing on the front, and after our southern sensibilities faded we realized was a snow plow! Hah! You certainly don’t see those around our part of…
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Mahogany Hammock Trail at Everglades National Park (2007)
Let’s travel back to Florida and less depressing things like losing a state park—because nature continues on even while we fight to save it. I actually remember very little about this trail. I can recall part of the boardwalk and that there were mosquitoes but I don’t recall seeing some of these plants! The peeling skin-like bark of a gumbo limbo tree, Bursera simaruba The fruits of a Florida strangler fig, Ficus aurea A nurse log filled with long strapferns, Campyloneurum phyllitidis…a common scene in many swampy hammocks in south Florida. An orchid that has died, probably a butterfly orchid. Hammock viper’s-tail, Pentalinon luteum. This is one of the plants…
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Goodbye to a State Park | Fairfield Lake State Park
Carolina larkspur, Delphinium carolinianum Rose bluet, Houstonia rosea Prostrate grapefern, Sceptridium lunaroides Trout lilies, Erythronium sp. Spiranthes tuberosa Carolina violet, Viola villosa—so many all over the park! I have never seen so many. Parlin’s pussytoes, Antennaria parlinii “One waxes pessimistic? Not so much … There is a pessimism about land which, after it has been with you a long time, becomes merely factual. Men increase; country suffers. Though I sign up with organizations that oppose the process, I sign without great hope.… Islands of wildlife and native flora may be saved, as they should be, but the big, sloppy, rich, teeming spraddle will go. It always has.” ― John Graves,…
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Cemetery Botanizing – Cartwright Cemetery | 1
Small skullcap, Scutellaria parvula Possibly bare-bottom sunburst lichen, Xanthomendoza weberi Carolina anemone, Anemone caroliniana Common blue violet, Viola sororia Southern bluet, Houstonia micrantha Early buttercup, Ranunculus fasicularis I’m not sure why I haven’t though to do this before but I got the idea from several botanists and naturalists who do this on social media: they go to old cemeteries to look for plants! A lot of times the cemeteries are somewhat neglected or at least frequently mown short which in turn promotes the growth of species that like that type of attention. Sometimes they are rare plants that can’t be found many places due to habitat loss. I typically frequent…
