Landscape Interpretation

The plants of any location tell a story about its ecological history. M.T. Watts published the first work on landscape interpretation in the 1950s as a means to teach the ecological principle of succession. In every area there is an orderly progression of vegetation that reclaims any land that has been disturbed – succeeding plant associations that finally result in “climax conditions,” the optimum diversity for a place at a certain time.

West Texas landscapes, due to our cyclical droughts, are always in flux. In the wettest years something similar to “climax conditions” are reached – for example the famous folktale that west Texas grasslands were belly deep to a horse when settlers arrived. They arrived during a wet year – Army reports from a few years before report completely different conditions.

This analysis is supposition – I do not know if it is correct. I hope the photographer will respond to the analysis.

In the foreground is hardpan soil, with dried early spring vegetation. It appears to be pepperweed, which germinates in the winter and goes to seed and dries up by May. It germinates and grows to 6 inches with 4 or more inches of rainfall from October to February. It grows in bare and compacted soils.

On the left side is at least one tumbleweed that has firmly lodged into the branches of the mesquite behind it. The mesquite is on a “hummock.” If there is a nearby source of blowsand, the blowsand piles up under a mesquite, and especially if tumbleweeds are lodged in the mesquite. Often fencelines at the edge of a plowed field become a long ridge of sand dune, with more sand deposited each year. This blowsand becomes more and more compacted with time, rain, and organic material.

In this photograph, though, on the right side, there is evidence of water erosion on the slope of the hummock. This indicates there is no longer much, if any, deposition of blowsand. To me, this indicates that the plowed field that deposited the sand under the mesquites is no longer plowed.

At the top of the ridge of the connected hummocks is a white evening primrose, and what appears to be a blue curls (Phacelia.) These plants grow in looser soil that can retain winter moisture. There is absolutely no grass in the photograph, which to me indicates that the deposition of blowsand probably ended in the last decade or so.