Essays
Moseying: Exploring the Natural World
Finding Wildflowers during a droughty spring can be exciting
June 4, 2008
“Pull over! What is that – Mountain Pinks? That would be a new species of wildflower for Midland County!” I was hollering at Deborah and we had not even gotten ten miles out of town. On Memorial Day Sunday we took a little afternoon drive. “We won’t see many plants blooming. We have only had an inch of rain all year, but let’s do it anyway. Let’s just goof off! We won’t go far, just down to the Place of Roadrunners near Pegasus, and maybe over south of Penwell. We won’t drive more than a hundred miles, and we will see at least four of the habitats of the Llano Estacado. We will spend less money than if we went out to eat tonight.”
I did not have to work hard to convince Deborah. We loaded up the dogs. Both boisterous Teddy and quiet little Rita love to ride and ride and ride. After we started rolling, Deborah dug a pen out of her purse and I found a junk mail envelope in the car and started the list of wildflowers. By the time we found the little pink flowers we already had twenty-five species. I called JoAnn Merritt about the little pink flowers and the next day she took identification books with her to investigate and proved the pink flowers were Stream Pinks, not Mountain Pinks, so it was not a new species for Midland County after all.
We normally find Stream Pinks in caliche pits that hold water, so to find the species in the roadside cut just north of Johnson Draw stuck us as very strange. I wanted to call them Mountain Pinks, for that species belong in limestone outcroppings like the cut. The same small stretch of road was full of unusual or late-blooming wildflowers that should have already gone to seed so late in May. Deborah and I found the species again, later in the day, at the edge of the sanddunes at the edge of the Llano Estacado, where U.S. 385 drops off of the Llano Estacado on the way to Crane. Deborah and I would find seventy-seven species of wildflowers that day. The next day Joann, husband Don, and fellow Midland Naturalist Sybil Eberhardt would find eighty-six species and only drive seventy miles.
On Wednesday Mrs. Wynnell Lewis from Seminole dropped by the Sibley Nature Center, clutching a very tattered Wildflowers of the Southern Great Plains (by Zoe Kirkpatrick.) Ms. Lewis is a retired art teacher and “goes wildflower-hunting” every chance she gets. She travels the roads of West Texas with a retired P.E. teacher by the name of Bucky Johnson who lives in Denver City. The two have given wildflower walks to schoolchildren along Denver City’s very own “Nature Trail.” We found that West Texas is a “small world.” She and her late husband Cletus (also a teacher) had planted Conservation Reserve Program native grasses on the prairie chicken preserve that Sibley board member David Crum leases in Yoakum County.
She had a little Evolvus Nuttalianus pressed in her book. “I can not find the name of this one. It is unusual. I rarely see it, but one came up in my yard this year and I just have to know the name. When Bucky showed me a story you wrote about wildflowers I copied it and send it to all my relatives that thought West Texas had no wildflowers. He also told me about some of the stories you wrote for the Midland Reporter Telegram that are on the Sibley website. Then I knew I had to come visit, because I knew I would learn the name of this little flower. The Sibley Nature Center is a great asset for all West Texans!” Her kind words got me in a giddy mood that lasted all afternoon.
It was a blast talking to Ms. Lewis and Mr. Johnson. One of us would start to describe an unusual plant we had found, and the other would finish the sentence with words like, “Yes, you find that just a couple miles past the junction of the Telephone Road with the highway from Andrews to Patricia!” They had also found the one and only clump in West Texas of Horse Nettle (that Deborah had found years ago) opposite the road that leads to the C Ranch headquarters. They were happy to hear “the rest of the story” – that the plant has persisted at that one location for almost a hundred years since it was accidently introduced in hay when the Midland and Northwestern Railroad stopped at a set of loading pens at the site.
Ms. Lewis commented, “People often don’t understand why we love to go looking for wildflowers. We passionate wildflower-watchers are crazy, most people would say.” I love meeting enthusiastic admirers of the West Texas landscape. Finding an unusual plant, or even dozens of species of wildflowers blooming in a drought time fills such enthusiasts with a deep feeling of “ what a blessing.” Enthusiasts like Ms. Lewis and Ms. Merritt are bubbly and cheerful for they enjoy how incredibly wonderful the simple “gifts of God” (wildflowers) truly are.
The towering thunderheads of late May have brought very little rain to Midland County. Other parts of West Texas have been drenched with several inches, and some places have weathered horrible hailstorms. Wildflower-watchers seek out the places where rain has fallen. Ms. Lewis and Mr. Johnson recently visited the area just east of Crosbyton. “Bucky and I got out of the car and started walking, and we kept finding more and more, until we were far from the car, which we had left unlocked with the windows down. One of the things we found was the narrow-leafed purple coneflower – what a pretty plant. I have planted a number of the West Texas wildflowers in my yard. Regular garden plants are nice, but West Texas wildflowers are special – maybe it is their wildness that makes them special. West Texas wildflowers are amazing survivors!”
- Summer bug camp – students 4th through 6th grade -- Students explore the 49 acres of the Sibley Nature Center catching everything that moves!
- Sibley Academy – classes for adults on paleontology, history, art, birds, gardening, outdoor sports