Deep in the Heart of Texas: Days 3, 4, and 5, Back on the Road

The point of our trip ... well, the point was to get to West Glacier, MT for a new innkeeping gig, but the objective was to see new wildflowers, and maybe even do a bit of bird-watching. And perhaps the biggest objective of all was Texas and its Bluebonnets and Paintbrushes and whatever else it had to offer. As it turned out, it had a lot to offer.

My wildflower furor was boiling over and spewing molten magma into the sky during the weeks leading up to our trip. A record wildflower bloom was painting Death Valley; Superstition Mt. in Arizona was the scene of a spring bloom traffic jam; Texas was red and blue (no political metaphor intended) with those wildflowers I mentioned above. All of the southwestern wildflowers were giving me acid reflux, insomnia, and I was beginning to stutter; I knew we were going to get there too late for much of the show. My best hope was for Texas.

Texas did not disappoint.

We saw Bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis) a-plenty (see my article of a year ago, Texas Bluebonnets, Every Last One of Them), but we were more astounded by the fields of Texas Paintbrush (Castilleja indivisa), which was more salmon than red in color.

The interesting thing about this paintbrush species are the bracts, which are the big colorful bits; the actual flowers are small and tucked away within the bracts. They are much broader than what I am accustomed to as being paintbrush bracts, broad and rounded like the petal of a flower; they are a striking surprise, making the whole Texas Paintbrush experience a big, botanical, steroid-looking, bright salmon-colored treat.

Texas Paintbrush is the only annual of all the Texas species. It blooms mostly from February into June, but it continues to bloom here and there and now and then into the autumn. It prefers the moist sandy loam of open areas, and is very common along roadsides. In some of the patches, some of the flowers were yellow, or pinkish, or some shade of salmon.

It was worth the drive to Texas; we didn't have to see anything else. But we did.

Of the nearly 70 different wildflowers we noted in Texas, a handful were widespread. One of these was Showy Primrose (Oenothera speciosa), a big pink member of the Evening Primrose (Onagraceae) Family. We weren't sure what it was at first, spotting it repeatedly at 70 MPH, but when we finally pulled over and had a look, and then bought a Texas wildflower field guide, we pinned a moniker to it.

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