Well, I declare!
I open the valve on the far-field water trough and I nonchalantly look around the ground, thinking, There are no new wildflowers about.
I am wrong Three new wild flowers come to my view.
Well, I declare, my Aunt Lennie used to say.
Turkey Tangle Fogfruit: Flowers of Flying Hat (32-38)
In my continuing project to photograph all different species of flowering plants on Flying Hat Ranchito during 2012-2013, I give you seven more Flowers of Flying Hat (32-38). Please correct my identification if I make an error, for I want my cataloging to be accurate.
32. Tall Coneflower, Rough Coneflower, Giant Coneflower (Rudbeckia grandiflora)
As the Tall Coneflower matures, it loses the green-gray cone, becoming brown. These are immature, but mature Tall Coneflowers erupt throughout the ranchito. These immature coneflowers suddenly sprang up after the last rain along a terracing ditch for stock ponds. The large spindle-like purple flowers in the background are horse mint, previously photographed.
No. 32 Family of Tall Coneflower
33. Texas Frogfruit, Turkey Tangle Fogfruit, Frogfruit (Verbena family), good nectar plant for butterflies, bees
No. 33 Sprawling Texas Frogfruit
This odd-named plant is a host to several larval: Phaon Crescentspot, Buckeye, and White Peacock butterflies. I find butterflies and bees abounding on its blossoms. The sprawl is located in front of my C&C livestock trailer and my Big Texas flatbed. It is flooded and dried by the sun, time and time again, and still remains robust and flowering. Frankly, I nearly passed over the blossoms for they are quite small — about 1/4 inch across –, but decided to go back this morning and photograph. Upon looking up its characteristics, I am impressed with its connections to bees, butterflies and larvae. I wish I knew how Frogfruit got its name. And it is Turkey Tangle Fogfruit, not Frogfruit, in case you are interested. Fogfruit, Frogfruit — what nomenclature our ancestors tagged on flora.
I can’t wait for someone to ask me down at the barn, What kind of plant is that?
My answer, Why don’t you know? Everyone knows that’s….
34. Tasajillo, Christmas Cactus, Christmas Cholla, Rat-tail Cactus, Pencil Cactus (Opuntia leptocaulis), edible fruit
If I have been stuck by this cactus once, then it is for sure at least a hundred times more over the years. I may have been bucked by a horse long ago into a bunch of these Christmas cacti. I have eaten the fruit carefully.
35. Coreopsis, Golden-Wave, Tickseed, Goldenmane Tickseed
I went down to the Grove this morning to see if the Wine Cups blossom in cooler temperatures — 70 F. The Wine Cups were gone, but these Goldenmane Tickseed had sprung up about the area where the Wine Cups had erupted. Fair enough, I think, for the soil is rich, the shade is cool by the creek, and there is room for several blossoming plants.
36. Soft Golden Aster (Chrysopsis pilosa)
37. Texas Thistle (Aster family)
38. Common Sunflower (Helianthus annuus, Aster family)
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Filed under Flowers of Flying Hat, Wild Flowers of Texas
Pink Rain
Pink Rain, Caralee Woods, Kanab, Utah
My last post, ‘Cloud Portal to the coast’, prompted Caralee Woods of Kanab, Utah, to send her ‘Pink Rain’ photograph with this appended message,
For some reason your photo reminded me of a different kind of rain photo I took sometime back here in the desert, right out my back door. The sun was setting and shining through some virga–rain that doesn’t reach the ground. I thought of Prince’s ‘Purple Rain‘ and decided to call this one ‘Pink Rain.’ The photo wasn’t enhanced, and I like the fact that the sage seems to glow.
Caralee resides with her husband, Jimmy Henley, in Kanab, Utah, where they are building a strawbale compound a few miles from the town. Jimmy and I have been friends since elementary school in the 1950s. In the 1970s, I met Caralee when she was a book representative for Harper & Row publishers. She came into my office at Amarillo College and called me, “Little Francis,” a nickname I had not heard since high school — courtesy of Jimmy, my old school chum.
Their website has several photographs of the guest house, main house foundation and walls, strawbales and their garden: Building Our Strawbale Home! The coloring treatment of their floors is fantastic: a dark copper, desert brown. Caralee and Jimmy established a compound that is off the electrical grid, using solar and backup diesel generators for energy efficiency. Visit their website also for the landscape vistas in her photographs. One of these days I hope to visit them again and see the progress they have made as well as gaze at the glowing sage and pink-virga rain.
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Filed under Life in Balance
Cloud portal to the coast
Thundershowers on either side of Interstate 20 west of Cisco, Texas, May 2012
Last Friday, May 11, 2012, I drove to Abilene for commencement at Cisco College where I instruct. West of Cisco, on Interstate 20, I saw this cloud portal — at least that is what I call it. I sped between the two thundershowers. A few drops fell on my car. The first couple of weeks in May is a time of showers and cool temperatures in west Texas. That is not always true, for this time last year, I was busy writing about wildfires in my area.
I have a friend at Cisco College that teaches English and he traveled to the Oregon coast last year, staying near Seal Rock and Newport, soaking in cool temperatures and consuming seafood and local white wines. He talks about moving to Oregon, selling his ranch and settling in the cooler climes. I think about the higher altitudes of northern New Mexico around Truchas and Taos that have sharp winters and cool nights during the summer.
We both will probably stay put: he in Santa Anna, me in Mingus, for there are mild winters and days in May where thundershowers bring out the Cut-leaf Daisy, Fire Whorls, Queen Anne’s Lace, Purple Dandelions in brilliant colors while horses and cattle graze in lush Spring fields of gramma and bluestem. I should like, however, to go to the Newport and Depoe Bay area of Oregon where my friend says, ‘There is a resident pod of whales for ten months out of the year about the coast. You can see them surface and dive, surface and dive.’
I want to see that scene some day. The cloud portal in the photograph above opens to the west, towards the Pacific, towards the whale. And away from home.
______________________________
Notes, corrections and additions:
Depoe Bay was added as an additional site my friend visited. It is a central location for beautiful scenery and whales. The boating outing in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ was filmed in the area.
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Orange milkweed, not globemallow
Please note the change of identification from 7:00 a.m. to 3:11 p.m. I thought you might like the changing process of classification.
Composed at ca. 7:00 a.m. this morning, before field trip
The hunt is on again for identifying a wildflower, but this time the plant in question falls outside the ranchito and does not fit into my project of cataloging wildflowers on my land.
Yesterday afternoon at about Mile Marker 352 on the south side of Interstate 20, I saw a bush-clump of brilliant orange-scarlet flowers. I have never seen such brilliance. Hurrying to the ranchito and my office, I combed page-by-page my wildflower identification books and at least five websites that classify flowers. I may have found the answer, but I cannot with a lot of confidence conclude the flowers to be the Caliche globemallow or Scarlet globemallow and I have had to reverse my classifications before — I once identified the Wine Cup as a Desert Mariposa — so, I must go up the hills to my west tomorrow and find the flowers again. Elaine Lee and her mother have recently seen ‘neon-orange flowers’ near Putnam, Texas, on Interstate 20.
In reflecting on the Scarlet globemallow (?), I may have seen a family’s roadside memorial marker with orange plastic flowers wrapped around a cross?
Composed at ca. 3:11 p.m. after field trip to photograph
I combined a trip to the First National Bank of Santo at Mingus, Texas, with a field excursion up on top of Ranger Hill (Mile Marker 352) to photograph this flower. I thought I had it down as a Scarlet globemallow even though I flew by the plant at 70 m.p.h. I made two trips by the flower before I turned into the grass along side Interstate 20. There was no access road nearby so I turned on my emergency blinkers. I discovered five clumps of the plant and its blossoms as trucks shot by. 
Of course, I am self-conscious at the side of an Interstate taking pictures of wildflowers: What the hey am I doing here? A few truckers blow their horn.
I admit I am so curious about this plant and flower that I spend $8.00 in diesel fuel going up the hill from where I live to get close to this flower and photograph. That’s ‘What the hey am I doing there.’ Secondly, what the hey is that flower doing there? Too many questions with not enough answers, so I drive back to the ranchito, eat a ham sandwich and upload the pics and begin to compare the blossoms with Scarlet globemallow. Totally different blossoms, totally different plants.
This search, I think, is going to go on for a long, long time. So, I pick up my first manual, and on page 16 of Campbell and Lynn Loughmiller’s Texas Wildflowers is the Orange milkweed also known as Butterflyweed, Butterfly milkweed, Orange milkweed or Pleurisy root. That was fast.
I have Green milkweed on the ranchito, but no Orange milkweed. I am curious as to the medicinal properties of the Orange milkweed. And, what is pleurisy? I remember hearing it as a boy: I’ve got some pleurisy this morning, Little Jack. I think it must be some sort of joint pain? In any case, I am confident as to the classification and it is a brilliant, showy blossom known as Orange milkweed.
Many county roads meander about my area. I think my next trip will be up the road for 15 miles or so where my mail carrier habitually sees a bobcat cross the road. There be things to discover and photograph up the road, up the hill and into nature’s wonders. I do believe it so.
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Filed under Wild Flowers of Texas
Wind, Yucca and Wine Cups: A Texas Spring
Two days ago I and the ranchito received 0.25 inch of rain, causing bees to work hard yesterday in the front yard, gathering pollen from an unidentified burst of small white flowers and residual Gyp Indian Blankets. I have photographed the white flowers and will integrate them into the catalog of Flowers of Flying Hat. Cool winds blew the yucca blossoms about and I took this video of wind blowing the yucca blossoms.
Rain fell this morning at the house and my commute to Abilene (87.2 miles) was tricky and slick in my large F-250 pickup. A Federal Express truck with two tandem trailers went off the road west of Cisco on Interstate 20 and turned over. From what I gathered, passing by in the rain, no fires erupted. I hope the driver escaped with little or no injury.
Elaine Lee wrote about the Wine Cups in our vicinity. She lives in Clyde, Texas, and drives to Cisco, Texas, every work day. Elaine is a careful observer of flora and fauna along Interstate 20, including the ducks on Baird Hill Pond. She has noticed, as I have, the large flock of wild turkeys that infrequently browse in the field south of Baird Hill. Elaine writes of the Wine Cups,
I’m certain you are correct about wine cup not being present last year in your location. This year, and never before, I saw wine cup growing along the highway edge in the Interstate 20 median. They were growing just west of Putnam, TX and stretched for probably 200 or 300 hundred yards. Of all Texas wildflowers, I have heard they are the most difficult to become established. I don’t know if grassfire in the median caused the heat to break their seed covering or ground heat from the drought, but whatever it was, it created a very nice showing this Spring. In years past I have seen them along the Interstate 20 frontage road not far from my sister’s house in Dallas, but never in this area. However, I hope they are here to stay since they add another color dimension to the Spring landscape.
In researching the Wine Cup, I have found something quite interesting. The Wine Cup has native distribution only to southwest Missouri and southeast Kansas, south to to Louisiana and central Texas. It has spread to other states. Flying Hat Ranchito is located on the western periphery of central Texas. My mailing address comes out of Mingus, Texas, but the ranchito is ten-or-so miles southeast of Mingus, back in the hills, in Sims Valley, near Hannibal, Texas. Hannibal now has one building that used to double as a general store with a Masonic Lodge on the second floor (don’t hold me too tight on these two historical functions of the building for I need to do more research). The Wine Cups I photographed are six miles away from Hannibal, to the north.
My plans for the weekend include further observations of Wine Cups in the grove area. At last count, eight Wine Cup blossoms erupted. Of yucca, some one-hundred stalks abound on the terraces. One hundred stalks times one-hundred blossoms per stalk equals 10,000 blossoms. Of rain, 0.25 inch two-days ago, about 0.10 inch this morning. Of bees and critters? I will count them another day.
______________________________
Notes, corrections and additions:
From the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, I quote,
Callirhoe digitata Nutt.
Finger poppy-mallow, Poppy mallow, Standing winecup, Wine cup, Winecup
Malvaceae (Mallow Family)
USDA Symbol: CADI2
USDA Native Status: Native to U.S.
The wine cup is a perennial growing 8–20 inches tall, depending on moisture and soil, with gray-green stems. Leaves are alternate, basal leaves having stems about as long as the leaf; leaves are coarsely lobed or scalloped to deeply 5-lobed. There are few leaves on the upper part of the stem. Flowers have 5 petals, cup-shaped at first and opening out nearly flat as the flower matures. They are violet to red-violet, sometimes white, 1–2 inches across. The stamens and pistil form a conelike structure in the center of the flower.
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Filed under Succulents, Wild Flowers of Texas
Wine Cup Clearing: Flowers of Flying Hat (25-31)
Wine Cup clearing
At 8:30 this morning, I walked and drove to the far field. Smiling at wild mustang grapevines that yield monarch butterflies along the fence row, I hiked with camera in the grove along Salt Creek. The creek runs water despite the lack of rain for over a month. Squall lines last evening bypassed the ranchito, dumping hail and rain in Fort Worth, sixty-seven miles away to the east and in Cisco, forty-five miles to the west. Wine Cup clearing, as I now call it, bears Wine Cups this Spring. I saw none last year. In the photograph above, the Wine Cups are on the right side of the clearing. They have cool shade from the oak and elm and the creek runs nearby that brings the ambient temperature down a few degrees.
Names have been given, I am sure, to places on the ranchito before I came, but they have not been passed down. (There has been only one owner previous to me besides the Venable family that settled larger sections of land in the surrounds.) I give a name first by location: near field, far field, arena pasture, barn pasture, etc., but then when an object or landform becomes prominent, like Pecan Tree or Wine Cup, I name the space, giving it animation and fixing the impression. I have no crew to direct into the pastures, but when I refer to The Grove or Pecan Tree Pasture, friends and family know where that is, associating flora and fauna with location, and ambiguity disappears.
25. Wine Cup (Poppy Mallow)
Two-years ago, I discovered one or two Wine Cups in the grove, up from the creek, in a private place for this blossom. Today, eight blossoms of Wine Cup or Poppy Mallow emerged from the same location. Eight Wine Cups are not a bell weather of climate change, but rather, I suspect, a change due to fallowing, allowing the flowers to replenish. Green grass and tall trees abound about the Wine Cup’s private place. I find no Wine Cups at other locations on the ranchito although I continue to search.
26. Trailing krameria,Crameria, Prairie sandbur, Trailing Ratany
I find Trailing krameria or Prairie sandbur in only two places on the ranchito, both on the knoll where the house sits. This is a delicate plant and can be missed and mowed under if one is not careful. It lies along the fence line between the house and front pasture and, secondly, has emerged on a terrace to the southeast. I find archeological evidence of hearth and tool making about the ranchito and I wonder if earlier inhabitants or migrants saw this plant. I presume so and know it must have some medicinal properties?
27. Skeleton Plant, Purple Dandelion, Flowering Straw, Milk Pink
The stems of Skeleton Plant are rigid, attached at obtuse angles, like a skeletal frame. The flower stalk and blossom are tall, some two feet. These plants are more prolific this year than two years ago. Here is a larger picture of the Purple Dandelion with yucca blossoms. I cultivate neither. Both emerge wild.
Purple Dandelions with yucca blossoms
28. Bull Nettle
In the far field I have Bull Nettle. It has medicinal properties, but is quite painful to be brushed against. As a boy, I got a painful lesson in ‘trying’ to pick its blossoms. I have a collector in Wisconsin to whom I will send a few with warning labels this Spring.
29. Prickly Pear cactus
30. Coneflower
31. Common Yarrow
No. 31 is Common Yarrow.
The pastures are browning here and towards San Angelo and Mexico I am told by ranchers more desert appears. Grass fires have been erupting this last week between here and Abilene. Yet, the diversity of nature here on these 53 acres of my ranchito shows both browning pastures and a creek that runs water with moss growing on its banks. Brown and green, primary colors of nature, intermingle and birds continue to sing despite the fear I have that a climate shift has come and the green will dwindle until next year’s Spring rains. I may be right; I may be wrong. As the ancients said, We shall see what we shall see.
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Filed under Flowers of Flying Hat, Wild Flowers of Texas
Olivetti and Flowers of Flying Hat (20-24)
Keyboard
When possible, I use a large keyboard, not the small letter touchpad of iPhone. Who can possibly compose substantially on an iPhone? My hands are large, like a teamster’s. Here is my keyboard (QWERTY) I have pressed and pressed posts since 2005. I ratchet out fifty-words a minute when inspired or copying. Nonetheless, I still have a typewriter although it is in the barn. It is an Olivetti portable I purchased in Amarillo, Texas, back in the 1970s. I look at Office Depot and Staples most times I shop and I still see typewriter ribbons stocked. How long will Office Depot stock typewriter ribbons? Probably not much longer. I like the clack, clack of the keys hitting paper, although it has been twelve years since I used the Olivetti. Although I eschew Wikipedia, the typewriter ribbons link above is quite informative.
* * *
20. Yucca blossoms
Here I have more photographs of flowers that blossom on Flying Hat Ranchito, an ongoing project of mine for 2012-2013. The yucca stalks that blossom flowers have been erect for two weeks, but only today have I seen blossoms. Although we have had rains that nourished the first eruptions of grasses and plants, for almost three weeks now we have been bereft of moisture. The pastures are already browning and it isn’t even May. Most likely, the failure of the yucca stalks to bear flowers emanates from our dry spell — we shan’t call it a drought, just yet.
21. Horse mint
Horse mint is neither as prolific nor robust as it was two years ago. Again, we lack additional rains to bring the horse mint to full fruition. But some hearty plants, nonetheless, have sprouted.
22. Texas pricklypoppy, Papaveraceae (Poppy Family)
To my west, on the Dooley place, a whole field of Texas pricklypoppy has erupted. I have a few poppies on Flying Hat Ranchito, and No. 22 is an example.
23. Unidentified
Yellow flowers predominate this time of year on my ranchito, especially the Cut-Leaf Daisy. But No. 23, a yellow flower, I have not identified. I first had it down as a Black-Eyed Susan, but now I am not so sure.
24. Indian Blanket
Indian Blankets are rather sparse this Spring, not fully developed as two years ago. Nonetheless, here is No. 24, a photograph I took this morning over in the far field. I have brilliant photos of the Indian Blanket from year’s past, but this No. 24 is from my project of photographing wild flowers for 2012-2013.
* * *
This morning as I drove along the southern boundary of the far field where the large pecan tree lives, I came across a roost of Monarch butterflies among the Mustang grapevines and mesquite. I estimate twenty to thirty Monarchs abounded, played and flew about the fence line, large butterflies they were. ‘Tis not a promise, but I may go over in the morning and photograph the area. And, I shall come back to the house and type out my spiel on a QWERTY keyboard, not an iPhone. Furthermore, my Olivetti portable needs to be resettled in my office and not remain in the barn, do you not agree?
Filed under Flowers of Flying Hat, Wild Flowers of Texas
Ranchito blossoms: Flowers of Flying Hat (14-19)
In my continuing task of photographing all different species of blossoms for one year on Flying Hat Ranchito (less than 2560 acres in western America), I have six new pictures to post, only two have I identified. I thought it better to start posting the ranchito blossoms even though identification is lacking because I don’t want to archive these beautiful plants and I think posting the unidentified will stimulate me to do further research, or possibly you-as-reader have a quick classification in mind.
This time last year, my posts focused on the wildfires and drought. Today, pastures are green — there is some browning already — and county fire bans in my area are lifted.
14. Milkweed
15. Nightshade
16. Texas vervain (Verbena halei)
17. Unknown
18. Unknown
19. Annual Phlox, periwinkle
Filed under Flowers of Flying Hat, Wild Flowers of Texas, Wildfire
Shame and Kisses: More Flowers of Flying Hat (12-13)
Catclaw or Shame Vine
12. Catclaw, Shame Vine
This blossom and plant attests a rapid response to the human touch. It is variously known as: Shame Vine, Sensitive-Briar, Catclaw, Shame-Boy (Mimosa microphylla). It has appeared every Spring since I have lived here, but I never photographed it before today. When I looked up the name of the plant, I also read that the tiny opposite leaflets close upward quickly when touched or walked upon. One authority says that the mechanism of withdrawal is not known in all respects. Fascinated, I went down after lunch and shot this video of the Catclaw or Shame Vine. Sure enough, when touched, it drew its claws in or folded its leaflets in ‘shame.’ Look at this video for it’s fascinating.
The Wild Honeysuckle or Kisses
13. Wild Honeysuckle, Bee Blossom or Kisses (Gaura suffulta), April 2012.
I spent two hours in the fields and grove this morning, photographing blossoms, mustang grapevines, yucca and the family of Gyp of Indian Blanket. Suddenly, there erupts in the pastures the Wild Honeysuckle pictured above. One day it is not there, the next day the flower is spread over five acres of pasture. I never knew Honeysuckle grew on the ranchito.
The area has had two good rains in the last month that accounts for the lushness of the fields.
Of course, in identifying the blossoms above I found no quick method to do so. I kept going among three wildflower books and the pictures in the books are not always precisely reflective of my photographs. I find the Lady Bird Johnson Wildlife Center possesses a number of photos and variations that I can deduce better than one picture in one book. But it did not help me this time. I nearly gave up and was about to publish the blossom anyway, when I went into the Roadside Flowers of Texas by Mary Metz Wills and Howard S. Irwin. Wills painted the wildflowers and did not photograph! Nonetheless, I found a sketch of Wills that coalesced the attributes of the Wild Honeysuckle for me to identify. Wills and Irwin’s book was published in 1961 by the University of Texas Press.
* * *
What is this with the local naming of plants? Shame Boy, Shame Vine, Kisses, Catclaw? Before we had scientific names, the visual and behavioral characteristics set plants and blossoms apart for identification. ‘Tis useful, quaint, enduring in memory. Only this Spring have I finally seen the ‘stork’s bill’ in the Stork’s Bill plant. It is not in the blossom, but is the shape of the seed pods in the plant’s emergent foliage. I think both names are necessary, the scientific for classification and study, and the local idiomatic names that reflect culture. I enjoy learning names of nature’s plants and creatures for it is like meeting strangers — long and lasting friendships may endure, strangers no more.
* * *
I know you may think I am tedious about the Gyp Indian Blanket, but here is another picture of the family. I can see the family outside my kitchen window and often monarchs perch and feed upon the family. I have photos of monarchs perched upon the blossoms and will post them in the future.
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Filed under Flowers of Flying Hat, Wild Flowers of Texas
Sage to Meadow ~ Jack Matthews 