Essays

Moseying: Outdoor Recreation Activities

The stories that wildflowers tell
April 24, 2002

"Caution! This vehicle stops for wildflowers!" The bumper sticker on my truck is not kidding. In April and May of each year, Deborah and I go wildflower hunting. We do our best to stay off interstate highways, U.S. highways and other busy thoroughfares, seeking out little used county and farm-to-market roads. Even if we are headed to a distant destination, we estimate our travel time at double that needed by anyone observing the speed limit.

"Huisache Daisy, Tansy Aster, Copper Mallow." Whichever of us is not driving keeps the list. We write down the common species as we drive. We always keep a trip list, and often keep county by county lists. Such behavior may seem strange, but it is a fun game that makes the miles go by quickly.

"Hey -- look here -- this is the furthest west we have seen bluebonnets!" On April 15th, 2002, Deborah and I found some just five miles east of Sterling City. "We know the seed had to be introduced by the highway department, but nobody watered them, so we can consider them wild." We write down every species we see, even the alfalfa, bur clover, filaree, wild turnip, and all the other non-native species.

I started keeping such lists when I was a pudgy nine-year-old bespectacled plant nerd. The activity has allowed me to become aware of the ebb and flow of populations of plants. Back then, I could not find Engelmann's Daisy anywhere, but now it lines the highways. Over the years I have watched African Rue, a deadly poisonous plant (for livestock) spread from the Pecos River Valley up on to the Llano Estacado and down into the Stockton Plateau.

Another lesson that a wildflower list maker can learn is how some plants will live in almost every soil type, while others are only found in one soil type. Some of the soil types, such as the gyp loess near salt playas, have our rarest plants. Here in Midland County, on the road to Midkiff, just east of a good sized playa, the parasitical broomrape can be found near its host the bluff daisy. On the same hillside puccoon and the orange buena mujer can be found.

Sometimes plants can be found "out of range." For example, creosote bush, skeleton-leaf goldeneye and tarbrush are Chihuahuan desert plants, but I have found them on a county road east of the Colorado River northeast of the ghost town of Silver. Such a plant community is a relict population, surviving for the thousands of years since the 2500 year drought of the altithermal, in the steep fast-draining gravelly soils of the location. Populations of Spanish dagger (Torrey Yucca) line mesa edges north toward Post, more evidence of drier times long ago.

Deborah and I always take a number of small manila packets. We like growing native plants, so a trip is not a success unless we collect a few seeds. Sometimes we carry a small soft drink cooler with a little ice, but it is not for drinks. We take cuttings of new growth of those woody plants without seeds, for later attempts at rooting back at home.

After giving a program to a civic group in Seminole, I once was stopped on the side of the road, leaning over the hood of the truck, examining a map. A deputy sheriff pulled up behind me, got out, and walked up on me without my becoming aware of him. "Lost?" he asked. After jumping sky high, I pointed at the map. "I'm trying to find a county road. I was just told about some plants that some folks in town wanted me to identify. I wrote down the directions, but I must have done it wrong." As I talked he looked very carefully into the bed of the pickup and then the interior of the cab. He asked for identification, and then asked what I did for a living. After checking the I.D. he asked, "What do the plants look like?"

I told him, and he answered, "Follow me, I know where they are, and I have been wondering what they were, too." He led me to a small population of Androstephium, a small, pale blue lily. Luckily I had along my copy of Rickett's Wildflowers of Texas and made the identification. It belongs in the prairies near Wichita Falls, not on the Llano Estacado. Not far away was a small grove of Siberian Elms around a small frame house mostly fallen down. "The folks that once lived here must have brought it," I said, marveling at the plants' tenacity. We stood and talked about the history of the area for a while. Several years later I went back to check on the place, and everything was gone, replaced by a new plowed field.

While Deborah and I traveled the Telephone Road a few years ago, she noticed a plant that I had always assumed was silver leaf nightshade at seventy miles an hour. She made me stop, turn around and go back, as I grumbled, "It's just nightshade." It was indeed kin to the nightshade, but it was horse nettle, normally found east of the Colorado River. Thousands of plants filled the small draw. She pointed at the old Fasken Railroad roadbed. "What if some livestock and hay were delivered here, back in the few years the railroad existed? The horse nettle could have come here then."

It is amazing what stories plants can tell!