Outdoors
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Texas Wildflowers: Spigelia marilandica, pinkroot
We’d just driven by some coral bean, Erythrina herbacea, when we spotted these flowers. Though we weren’t going terribly fast I initially thought they were the same until I realized they weren’t. Chris reversed the car and we stopped and looked at them for awhile before deciding we’d have to look them up later. This woodland plant likes loamy soils and occurs fairly widespread in the southeastern United States. There’s also another species with a white flower in Texas, Spigelia texana. It seems that it will grow in USDA zones 5 to at least 9 so there is wide variety for garden usage. The shape of this flower seems to…
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Texas Wildflowers: Clematis crispa, swamp leatherflower
We first saw this flower on the side of a levee in the Beaumont Unit of the Big Thicket National Preserve. We later found another plant on another roadside in the northern section of the same unit. The initial flower we saw had more purple in it compared to this nearly all white flower above. It appears they can vary in color from pink, blue, purple and white. Blooming throughout the spring to very early fall, Clematis crispa isn’t relegated only to Texas and occurs throughout the southeast. We found this plant among purple vetch and pinkroot, two plants that will be shown on another wildflower post later. The Lady…
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Big Thicket Pitcher Plant Trail
On our way home from Beaumont we stopped by the Pitcher Plant Trail in the Turkey Creek Unit of the Big Thicket. We showed up just after sunrise, Chris was a bit miffed we didn’t get there a few minutes prior, but I think it worked out anyway. We’d been to this trail before last November but the pitcher plants weren’t blooming or looking too swift. Now they were blooming and looking great! It’s only about an hour from Beaumont so I’m sure we’ll end up there again during our next two months in Beaumont. I tried the white background thing again but it wasn’t that great, however I got…
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Texas Wildflowers: Gaura coccinea, Scarlet gaura
Scarlet gaura is a fairly common herb growing in the central and western United States. Part of the evening primrose family, Onagraceae, it seems to have a variety of color shades. A quick search yields photos of truly scarlet flowers to pink and then white varieties as well. It seems that this plant can be a bit weedy but it has drought tolerant attributes that would lend it to be good in a garden. I might have to add it to mine one day! –Gaura in the garden –Dave’s Garden on gaura –A blog on gaura in the garden –Gaura coccinea information
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Silent Sunday—Swallow-tailed Kite edition
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Texas Wildflowers: Oenothera speciosa, pink evening primrose
Growing up I knew these flowers as buttercups. They would be picked and put into cups to enjoy and I can see my niece Zoe continuing in this fashion as she already collects dandelion flowers from my parents yard. It was only recently when my brother made a comment about them being primroses that I did some research and realized that was what they really were! This perennial is native to the central plains down into Texas and is a prolific bloomer. In fact I’d say it is the prominent flower on the roadsides now. I was thrown off that this was an evening primrose because these flowers are blooming…
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Prairie Fest—April 23, 2011
We didn’t make it last year but hope to this year. Wanted to pass the information on so maybe you can, too! If not, you should at least check out Tandy Hills sometime!
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Swamp Creatures
Today we had an amazing animal day despite our really crappy day of trying to get to our points to collect data. We ended up waist deep in thick floton (floating plant matter) in some areas and it was not pleasant. Sometime floton is thick enough to actually walk on, carefully, but this kind was not too thick and breaking through it was inevitable. That means you then post-hole through the floton moving at an incredibly slow pace. It was not pretty. However, we were able to get some awesome shots of animals today, including this alligator snapping turtle up on shore to lay eggs. She was ginormous!! And then…
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Texas Wildflowers: Trifolium incarnatum, crimson clover
I was drawn to this flower while photographing the white bluebonnets and was sad to read that they were not native wildflowers. These European natives are now used for roadside stabilization and as a forage crop for cattle but have taken over some areas and tend to shove natives out of the way. Too bad it isn’t a native because it sure is pretty! –FAO factsheet Other wildflower series: Indian paintbrush Texas bluebonnets
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More Swamp Work
Where Chris and I are working reminds us a bit of a mix of the Everglades, which I think mentioned in the last Swamp Work post. It isn’t common to walk through thickets of cut grass, getting cut up by it as we walk through. And then there is the mud slogging. Sometimes we’re able to walk through areas with a mostly hard bottom, albeit a little muddy, but then we get in areas that are 1-2′ thick of floating plants and root matter and once you break through that it’s mud on the bottom. Then you slog through that. Previously these areas in the ‘glades would’ve been accessed by…