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Texas Wildflowers: Gaura coccinea, Scarlet gaura
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed by email! Thanks for visiting! 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…
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2800 Miles Ago
Today is April 20th. And in pot smoking lingo it is 4/20. Now, I’ve never smoked pot but I do know some of the lingo and when I saw that it was 4/20 I remembered that we were on a ridge above Watauga Lake in Tennessee, somewhere near the 420 mile mark. I remembered this because there was a hiker named Strider, one of at least two named that, who was young, maybe 18, and had this desire to get to mile 420 on 4/20 so he could smoke a joint—or perhaps a few. He wasn’t anywhere around us on that date, but we were at shelter there and wondered…
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Florida Trail Tales 7: Lake Butler to White Springs
As we were leaving Lake Butler the sunshine that had decided to poke through during the lunch hour seemed to be retreating. Clouds were rolling in and we still wanted to get another 10-12 miles in before stopping for the end of the day. We left town following a road west and then north before entering the Lake Butler Forest, a pine plantation owned by Plum Creek Timber. It’s a forest but it’s a crappy one. Back when we’d first met Shamrock Steve down near Titusville he’d told us of an area with these weird mounded hills that were a pain to walk across. Then it was some foreign location…
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Beaumont Botanical Gardens
On our Sunday off a week ago in Beaumont we took a trip to a few botanic gardens. One of them is a free to the public garden, the Beaumont Botanic Garden. We arrived too early to see the conservatory but we did a tour of the garden. I think the rose garden was the most stunning but they did have some other beautiful parts in the garden. Several people were taking graduation photos. We’re off for at least a week as we switch projects down in the Big Thicket but when we return we’ll drop by the conservatory and see what’s blooming in there.
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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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Florida Trail Tales 6: S.R. 19 to Lake Butler
After leaving Buckman Lock we crossed S.R. 19 and into an area that as best we could tell was only used by ORVs. I’m not sure if it was public or private land, but we weaved through all sorts of dirt and mud roads that were completely destroyed by off roading vehicles. There was a lot of trash in this area, too, which is always disappointing to see. We ended up following a fire break line at one point, another section of fluffy sand. *gah!* Eventually we found an old, overgrown railroad bed that we followed until we found what was listed a potential campsite in the guidebook. Yes, our…
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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