Outdoors
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Texas Wildflowers | Rosa bracteata, McCartney Rose
We initially saw these roses growing along Texas Point NWR and later discovered they are an invasive rose. Originally from China they join a host of other roses that have naturalized across the south, including the Cherokee rose and prairie rose. While they are beautiful, they are like other invasives and smother out native vegetation. Definitely think twice before planting or starting these plants in your own yard and opt for a non-invasive rose! This guy in Tampa had a tree sized McCartney rose! Yikes! More information: +Texas invasives +Galveston Bay invasives +USDA plant database
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Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve | Part 2
For the first installment: go here There will definitely be at least one more, if not two, posts about this tiny little preserve. Had to do some digging to come up with names for some plants and then I still don’t know a few! Had some fun chasing this ant around on what I believe is Rhynchosia tomentosa. And then I spied this Passiflora lutea growing under the taller herb layer. Didn’t see a flowering plant. And while I was down checking the passionvine out I decided to see how an ant feels and show how it looked like a mini-forest under there. Looking down towards the pond in front…
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Texas Wildflowers: Saururus cernuus, Lizard’s tail
This plant is one of my favorite wetland plants. They offer beautiful texture to the marsh and smell pretty good, too! A wetland plant, they are a perennial and range to approximately 2′ in height. Lizard’s tail is native to much of the U.S. and can be found in freshwater to brackish marshes. The plant mainly spreads by rhizomes so it would be easy to divide and spread in a garden. Apparently in Connecticut and Rhode Island the plant is considered endangered! More information: +Missouri Plants information +USDA page +Wildflower.org +Connecticut Botanical Society +Pond Megastore potential place to buy it for your garden. +Water Garden.org another potential place to buy…
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McGuire Tract @ Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge
A few weekends ago Chris and I ventured out to the McGuire Tract of the Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge. It was a hot and humid day by the time we arrived so there wasn’t a lot out on the trail. We had to drive through some back roads to even reach this tract and I wondered how often it was even used. Luckily the ‘trail’, a wide grassy road of sorts, was mowed so we didn’t have to deal with itchy grasses. I’d love to explore more of this area and paddle around on the Trinity too…some day! Next time we’ll attempt it in a non-heat and buggy season.…
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How to Hug a Tree.
First: Find a big tree. Yes, that is a leg you see up top. A coworker climbed it…he was daring, I was not. Second: Get up close. Wrap your arms around it. Third: Don’t forget that it might dwarf you. We found our largest tree so far, at least I think so…we’ve seen some rather large stumps that were logged, too…a Nyssa aquatica aka: water tupelo. This one was hollow and had cool air coming from the little crevice in its base. I peered inside, got a whiff of musty odor and found nothing living there. We decided it’d be a great place to camp out if the base was…
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Texas Wildflowers: Heliotropium curassavicum
Ah, yet another salt marsh plant! This dicot is a native to the majority of the US and several Canadian provinces. This heliotrope can handle saline and wet communities and is found around salt marshes and margins of wetlands within the interior. It flowers for quite awhile from spring to early fall, preferring mostly full sun. I can’t find a lot about the wildlife value of the plant but I imagine it attracts butterflies. It could be difficult to find in nurseries if you are trying to use it as a garden plant, so maybe starting from seed from a plant in a natural habitat might be the way to…
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Texas Wildflowers: Distichlis spicata, salt grass
Ok, ok, this isn’t a wildflower, but a grass, however I really like this grass so I’m throwing it in for fun! Yes, we’re still on a run of salt marsh plants I learned in college and as for grasses, they are really difficult (in my opinion) to key out and since I actually know this one I’m going to share it. As its common name suggests, salt grass is tolerant of saline environments however it is known to grow in non-saline areas. It handles the wet soils well but can tolerate drier, sandier soils as well. In North America the habitat it can grow in is widespread, including the…
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The Royal Fern Bog
There’s a pretty unique area where we are working called the Royal Fern Bog. It is a cypress and tupelo swamp covered in lizard’s tail (the white flowers in the photos) and royal ferns, Osmunda regalis. I shot these several weeks ago and I’m really happy with the very first one. It will probably make it to the Wildscape site. Enjoy the bog!
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Argiope aurantia juvenile | Black and Yellow Argiope
I’m not looking forward to these spiders getting larger, they seem to get bigger by the day. We keep walking into their webs on an hourly basis, thankfully Chris is the web walker most days. Took me a bit to figure out which spider this was because it was a juvenile but I found a great resource here. I love spiders from a distance and always see very cool ones in the mud and even walking on the water and floating plants in the Thicket. Wish I had my camera for those shots but when you are waste deep in mud and water, and carrying equipment and such, it isn’t…
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Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve | Part I
A few weekends ago, on our Sunday off, Chris and I went to the Watson Preserve. It’s about an hour from Beaumont and well worth the drive. In fact, it has such a diversity and beat the Sundew Trail at the Big Thicket that day for having more blooms and plants worth seeing. I’d love to meet Geraldine Watson sometime (you must watch the video that is the link!). If you are ever in the area I highly recommend stopping by this place and checking it out. I’m breaking the trip down into several posts as I took a zillion photos. The photos on this post are with three areas…