I was out in mid-April this year and photographed this perfect example of Erodium texanum also known as the Texas Stork’s Bill. If you know geraniums, you will notice how similar the the leaves of Texas Stork’s Bill are to them. In fact, both Stork’s Bills that occur in Texas are in the Geranium family (Geraniaceae). Read more about the Texas Stork’s Bill here, here, and here.

Here are some other examples of Texas Stork’s Bill that I photographed several years ago. Notice the large purple flowers and the geranium-like leaves.

In all of these photos of Texas Stork’s Bill, you have a few individuals in proximity to one another and all of these produced flowers in March and April.

This image shows the Red Stem Stork’s Bill, Erodium cicutarium, a cousin of Texas Stork’s Bill from Eurasia. Here you can see the lobes cut into the palmately compound leaves and the multi-flowered umbel. Notice in the background there are many, many other individuals of this species covering the ground in view.

Both species of stork’s bill get their name from the way their seed pods grow to resemble the head and long beak of a stork. Notice here, along the stems you can see how strongly hairy these plants are when compared to the almost invisible fuzziness of Texas Stork’s Bill and geraniums.

This image was taken on the 20th of February, you can see a tiny Red Stem Stork’s Bill in flower. (the knife blade is 1 inch wide at the edge of the picture) This species was introduced in the US in the seventeen hundreds, most likely because it is edible (Webb, Robert H.; Steiger, John W.; Newman, Evelyn B. 1988. The response of vegetation to disturbance in Death Valley National Monument, California. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1793. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey. 69 p.)(USGS). It reproduces prolifically and has become a competitor to cool season farm crops. It has invaded all 50 of the United States and all of Canada. Remarkable plant.

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Pictured here is an example of Lygodesmia texana, the Skeleton Plant.
This is a strange looking plant because of the green flower stems which lack any leaves.

This member of the Asteraceae family blooms from April till August in Texas and can be seen in New Mexico and Oklahoma, too. Notice the branching pattern of the stems and the single flower bud or bloom at the end of each branch. These plants can be 10 to 15 inches tall which makes them taller than most of the grassland vegetation nearby.

Here is a bloom just opening. Skeleton plants generally have only one bloom open at a time for just a single morning. Another interesting characteristic of this species.

In this image, notice the five teeth at the end of the “flower petals” or ligules as they are properly called. Each ligule is connected to a single floret which combine to make the compound flower that you see.

Skeleton plants that I have seen are usually this beautiful lavender color. They can also produce a pale bluish flower and I have seen them in white only once. Their complex flowers produce nectar that feeds many kinds of butterflies and other insects. I find their leafless stems and bold flowers a beautiful example of the wide variety found in the the Daisy family.

You can learn more about this wildflower at the Lady Bird Johnson Wild Flower Center website.

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One of my favorite wild flowers is the Basket Flower, Centaurea americana. It grows in many places across Texas. I love the delicate petals of this flower and their shades of lavender. Basket flowers are members of the Asteraceae family and their flowers are really compound flowers where each petal is associated with a single tiny flower within the composite flower head. They get their name from the phyllaries or bracts that surround the base of the flower head to form a cup of interwoven spines that resemble a basket. They bloom from May till August each year.

The butterfly nectaring on the Basket Flower is an Orange Skipperling, Copaeodes aurantiaca in the family Hesperiidae, the skipper butterflies. Skippers like moist areas along the margins of rivers and streams. This stand of Basket Flowers was beside a bridge over a small stream in West Texas at the edge of the caprock.

In the last image, you can see the proboscis of the skipperling probing the flowerlets for nectar. I am literally amazed at how these tiny creatures unfurl these structures and guide them into the multitude of tiny flowers on a plant like the Basket Flower. This kind of behavior goes on all around us largely unnoticed or appreciated by our species. These images remind me what a complex world we live in and give me a sense of wonder about something as simple as a butterfly and a flower.

For more information on these two species, you can visit the Butterflies and Moths website and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

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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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I have seen these little yellow flowers appearing all over my lawn during March. I finally found time to photograph them! These flowers are about an inch in diameter, about half the length of a honey bee.

Oxalis dillenii are perennials which means they come back every year. I love their tiny, bright yellow flowers. The day was slightly overcast when I took these pictures. When the sun isn’t shining brightly enough, these little guys fold their leaves.

One of the characters that identifies this species is the way its flower stems bend at both ends to position its seed capsule so it can eject its seeds far from the parent plant when it explodes! Little missile launchers in the lawn! You can see a flower in the bottom foreground that has set seed and shows the double bend. The maturing seed pod at the center of the image is what the foreground flower will look like eventually.

When the sun goes down, O. dillenii rolls up its flowers, and folds its leaves. Amazing!

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Prairie Sandbur, Krameria lanceolata, are members of the Ratany family (Krameriaceae). Prairie Sandbur grows along the ground and the leaves and stems of this plant are covered in white hairs as seen here. These native perennials bloom from April to October and prefer environments that shade them partially from the sun.

The five deep pinkish red “petals” are really sepals, the portion of flowers that usually enfolds the bud and forms the base for the petals and other flower parts. The true petals are uppermost in the center of the flowers and very small. Those pictured here have a light green basal portion to them. The fruit of these flowers is spiny and covered in wool. They are no relation to the grass-bur so commonly encountered in Texas. I think these flowers resemble tiny turkeys and that is the image I use to help me remember them.

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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 bumble bee in this picture is Bombus pennsylvanicus and it is collecting nectar from the bloom of Echinacea purpurea. Notice the pollen collected on the hind-leg of the bee.  For more information, visit the links below.

Echinacea purpurea at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Iowa State University’s Department of Entomology’s BugGuide

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A Black Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio polixenes) nectaring on a Basket Flower (Centaurea americana).  One of the largest butterflies that we see in Texas. Similar in size to the Monarch. The wings of the females have blue bands of color on them while the upper surface of the male wings will lack this band. Many species are sexually dimorphic, which is a fancy way of saying the sexes look different from one another in some way(s). I am continually amazed at the way they use their proboscis to find the tiniest florets on a compound flower like Centaurea and other Asteracea family members.

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