I was mowing the dense growth of wildflowers that have burst forth on the property during mid-March to mid-April 2017. We have received about 4 inches of much needed rain and the warm temperatures have kicked the plant life into high gear. After all, it is springtime.

I spotted Yellow Clover, Slender Yellow Wood Sorrel, Engelmann’s Daisy, Yellow Spiny Daisy, Redstem Stork’s Bill, Goat’s Beard and this little beauty, Prairie Spiderwort. While the rest of the wildflowers went under the blade to mulch land, I mowed around this tiny plant with care so I could take these photographs. This is the first time the I have seen Tradescantia occidentalis in the yard.

Spiderworts belong to Commelinaceae or Spiderwort family. There are at least 14 species in Texas. If you look at the sepals on the unopened flowers and they are fuzzy or hairy, you are looking at T. occidentalis. T. ohionensis, or Bluejacket can also be found within the same area and they have hairless sepals except for their tips.

In the second image, you can see a tiny copper-colored Halictid bee that was feeding on this tiny flower. These bees come in copper, metallic green, and plain black colors. They are the reason I let so many wildflower populate my yard; besides, I like to see more colors than just grass green.

You can read another one of my posts about another Prairie Spiderwort I found in an interesting place in Fort Worth.

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Once upon a time, I knew this plant as Texas Dotted Blue-eyed Grass. Since that time, Sysirinchium pruinosum has undergone reclassification to Sisyrinchium langloisii, the Roadside Blue-eyed Grass. This tiny Iris family (Iridaceae) member is seen all over Texas wherever sandy or clay loam grasslands occur. You only get to see these tiny-flowered beauties in April and May when it is cool enough for irises to bloom.

The individual pictured above is from West Texas in 2017. The tips of its tepals show a little wear, but you can see the basic pattern of the flower. Tepal is a botannical term to describe those flowers that produce petals that cannot be distinguished from sepals which usually encase the flowerbud. Tepals serve as sepal and petal in these kinds of flowers.

The grass-like leaves are a miniature version of what you would see on their Iris cousins that folks put in their gardens. These guys are perennial and reproduce from their rhizomatous roots (the short way of saying that they make thick roots that grow underneath and parallel to the ground which produce the plant you see.).

The second image shows a colony that grew in a wet year down in Fort Worth. It shows how the undamaged, or unstressed tepals should look. They are evenly rounded when open and not notched or bent at the tips. You can also see the centrally located column of pistils and stamens.

The third image shows a more robust specimen found in a Fort Worth park. I suspect that tepal malformation here is due to lack of water.

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Springtime in Texas is one of the prettiest times of the year because of all the wildflowers that grace the countryside of our state. Bluebonnets are one of the most conspicuous wildflowers and can be seen all over the state. Lupinis texensis, the Texas Bluebonnet, is a member of the Fabaceae or Legume family. It is a cool season plant that spends the winter as a seedling to burst forth and flower as a springtime treat only to set seed and “disappear” until next spring. Bluebonnets are annuals, they complete their life cycle in a year and their offspring return the following year. As a result of mutations, you can see white-flowered and reddish-purple flowered varieties of bluebonnets. Four other species of Lupinis are recognized in Texas.

In the picture above, you can see a small portion of a much larger group of Texas Bluebonnets. These plants taste bad to livestock and consequently are not grazed which helps them cover large areas undisturbed. Our highway department and folks who love bluebonnets scatter their seed which helps this plant to produce large colonies all over the state. Lots of families have pictures of their children in the middle of a stand of bluebonnets. You can visit the Houston Chronicle Website  to learn how Texas Bluebonnets became the state flower.

In the picture above, it is possible to see the raceme, or flower stalk of the bluebonnet. Racemes consist of an unbranched stem or shoot from which multiple flowers are suspended by a short flower stalk called a pedicel. Lupinis texensis racemes contain 25 to 40 flowers. Each tiny flower on the raceme has five petals, a centrally located banner petal with a white or purple spot which is flanked by two wing petals. The two remaining petals form the “keel” which is the projection seen below the spot on the banner petal. (look at the flowers on the left side near the top to see this structure). Each tiny flower, or floret as botanists call them, on the raceme grows, opens, and maybe is pollinated before it dies. On the pictured raceme, the oldest flowers are lowest on the raceme. The banner spot on Bluebonnets turn purple with age, the white spots attract the pollinators while the purple spots do not. In this way, Bluebonnets help direct pollinators to fertile flowers of the right age.

Notice the leaves in the image, they are palmately compound and covered with fuzz. Palmate in botanical terms means the leaflets are arranged about a central attachment point like the veins in a palm leaf. Also, the number of leaflets is 5, the same number as petals in the flowers. When all the flowering is done, around May, all that remains of the Bluebonnets are the leafy basal portions of the plant and the remains of the florets that were fertilized which will grow into fuzzy bean pods or legumes containing 3 to 10 seeds for next year’s crop. Such is the life of an annual.

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Pictured here is a Prairie Spiderwort, Tradescantia occidentalis. It belongs to the Spiderwort family, Commelinaceae. There are 14 different species of spiderworts found in Texas, six of them are found only in Texas.

I took this picture because I don’t regularly find spiderworts in sandy open situations like you see here. They are usually part of a grassland ecosystem and they are surrounded by many other plant that make a photograph like this impossible.

The grass like leaves and the three petal flowers are useful characters for distinguishing these plants from others. I love their blue color and I have seen other spiderworts with purple or lavender flowers. This picture was taken in the Fort Worth area and I have seen only one other kind of spiderwort in that area. Tradescantia ohioensis, known as the Bluejacket Spiderwort, is easily distinguished from T. occidentalis by looking at the sepals covering the unopened flower. If the sepals look fuzzy all over, you are looking at T. occidentalis. Conversely, T. ohioensis will have smooth sepals with tufts of hair at their tips.

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This is the bloom of the Celestial or Ghost Iris, although the USDA (http://plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=NEGE ) calls this species the Praire Pleatleaf. Nemastylis geminiflora is a perennial wildflower in the Iridaceae family (irises) that is found throughout Texas. They are small plants 6 to 18 inches tall and they like dry calcareous soils. Each flower lasts for a single day. This flower is one of my favorite wildflowers because of its petal color contrasted with the yellow stamens. Look for them blooming March through May.

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The above picture shows a group of Mealycup Sage (Salvia farinacea). They are a common sight in the parts of Texas where the soils are derived from limestone. These plants will grow in clays, sandy, and loamy soils of this type and do well with little water. They can be seen from late spring to early fall. They are short for members of the Salvia genus growing 2-3 feet tall. Like other members of the Mint family (Lamiaceae) they have square stems. This species is very similar to the Blue Sage (Salvia azurea) but can be distinguished by the differences in height and in the amount of hair on their tubular sepals.

Mealycup Sage has the sepals beneath its flowers fused into a tube. Their surface is densely covered with white hairs which gives the light green sepals a grayish color. Mealycup in the name refers to the grayish appearance of the sepals when viewed from a distance. Blue Sage will be a taller plant and its tubular sepals look light green.

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This member of the Lamiaceae or Mint family can grow to 5 feet tall. The shape of the the sage flower is distinctive. The color of its petals can be deep blue, light blue, to almost white. The surface of the plant is covered in fuzzy hairs. The margins of the narrowly lanceolate leaves are entire or broadly toothed. This hairy perrenial can be found in dry calcareous soils throughout the state. They can easily be mistaken for mealycup sage, Salvia farinacea, but close examination of the tube formed by fused sepals will clarify which specimen you are viewing. If the sepal tube beneath the flower is green and not covered with dense white hair, you are looking at Salvia azurea, Azure Blue Sage. Both species of sage produce flowers from mid-spring to late fall.

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