Pictured here is an example of a succulent in the genus Echeveria that I photographed on a recent trip to Fredericksburg, Texas. The town is a very interesting place with a main street that has lots of interesting shops located in historical limestone buildings.

Naturally, I was more interested in the beautiful planters and the menagerie of plant life that graced the store fronts. I highly recommend a visit to this town if you are in the vicinity, it is worth a look, and not only for the plants.

In this image which is a wider shot of the previous image, you can see the larger parent plant surrounded by its offspring, the smaller plants nearest to it. Some folks call the arrangement hen and chicks. You start with one, and wind up with many.

I like succulents. They are adapted to resist dry environments, and to me, they represent another marvelous example of the way nature shapes the characteristics of living things. You can read more about them at Wikipedia and see a wonderful collection of the varieties you can add to your garden at the World of Succulents website.

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On a recent trip to Austin and Fredericksburg, I spotted a limestone hillside south of Abilene covered in these beautiful pink wildflowers. I was unable to stop and photograph them on the way to Austin, but I figured I would have an opportunity on the way home.

We were heading north from Junction, Texas when I spotted some of these beautiful flowers and had my wife pull over on the shoulder of what we thought was a low traffic highway. We had seen very little traffic since leaving Junction, but during the 20 minute stop, we were nearly killed by an impatient motorist who started to pass a car on the shoulder of the road near where we were parked. This is illegal, and he would have killed me and hit the car and my wife at 75 miles per hour. I’ve heard of dying for your art, but I wasn’t prepared to sacrifice either one of us for pretty pink flowers. Thankfully, this idiot saw us in time and we lived to tell the tale.

Pictured here is an example of Centaurium beyrichii, or Mountain Pink. It is a member of the Gentian family (Gentianaceae). It is an annual that tolerates dry, rocky, limestone rich soils and makes a colorful addition to rock gardens. You can read more about them at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower website at wildflower.org and USDA Plants website which shows that this species is only found in Texas and Oklahoma.

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The pads produce white to gray, brownish, or reddish spines in clusters of 1 to 10 spines ranging in length from 1-3 inches. In addition, the base of each spine cluster is ringed by numerous hair spines or glochids. It is bad enough to get the longer spines stuck into your feet or hands but the hair spines are an additional insult that requires much more attention to detail to get them all removed.

Opuntia produce new pads along the edges of previous year’s pads so they appear as a cluster of pads that spread out along the ground from original plant. Prickly pear pads in contact with the grounda will form roots. Like cholla cactus, the pads of the prickly pear can form a new plant if they are removed from the parent plant by animal activity and are left in contact with the ground.

Prickly pear are named for their cylidrical fruit that are covered with hair spines or glochidia. The flowers of Opuntia generally can be seen in yellow, yellow and red, or a dull reddish pink color.

Ripe fruits are generally cherry red in color but they can be pink or pale green.

Some folks collect these and remove the glochidia before making them into jams or jellies. The young pads of Opuntia are also edible and are the nopalito seen in some grocery stores these days. All parts of the pads can have hair spines and care must be taken to remove these before consumption.

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The cactus pictured is Cylindropuntia leptocaulis, the Desert Christmas Cholla. It is one of the most widespread of the cholla cacti. They are found in western Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona and northern Mexico. When taller plants are around this species will grow beneath them and use them as a trellis to support taller growth. The cactus in these photos was growing along and using the support of a barbed wire fence, and it was beneath a tree.

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We have a section in the front yard that has a cedar elm tree surrounded by Tree Cholla cactus, Cylindropuntia imbricata. As you can see the body of the plant is made of cylindrical branches that have no regular arrangement. The cholla here has spread fill the space we grant it in the yard. The elm tree was not planted and came up amidst the cholla from seed eaten and scattered by one of our local birds. All the water last winter, and the wet spring brought this plant into flower in May of 2016.

I exercise care around the cholla because they have spines that like to embed themselves in flesh and hang on. When they do, a piece of the cholla can break off and be carried some distance from the parent plant and if it lands in fertile circumstances, more cholla! This talent of the cholla has to be considered when reducing or removing parts of the plant. Failure to keep pieces from finding new homes means More Cholla!

Our cholla patch occasionally produces the beautiful purple flowers typical of this species. It also is a barbed refuge for our local cottontail. We do not water or feed the cholla and it does what west Texas cacti do, it gets by on what’s available.

I am not sure how the cholla got its name; but on one, long ago field trip, the sound I and others made while having close encounters with the spines of this plant sounded like CHOYAH!!  And these were followed by grunts and ouches as these things were pried from our flesh. This where young folk learn respect for nature, especially cholla.

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The Desert Willow, Chilopsis linearis, is a flowering tree that is found in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California and into Northern Mexico. It grows naturally along arid washes and arroyos, and is sold commercially in West Texas and elsewhere as an ornamental landscape plant.
The photo above shows the beautiful purple and white bell-shaped flower produced by these trees. As you can see from the Common Roadside Skipper, these plants provide nectar feeders access to needed food. Desert Willow flowers during May and June but will bloom in other months after a good rain. This picture was taken in late July.

The fruit is a capsule reminiscent of a been pod but these trees are not in Leguminosae also known as Fabaceae (peas and beans), but rather, they are in the family Bignoniaceae which includes the catalpa trees, trumpet-creepers, and cross vines.

The beautiful green narrow willow-like leaves are what give this plant its name.

On young trees, the bark is smooth like young willows and becomes thicker and more fissured with age.

Birds eat the seeds of these plants and bees make good honey from their nectar.

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