Strolling through the garden on a recent cool morning, I spied a Southern Pink Moth, Pyrausta inornatalis, on the lower lip of a White Tropical Sage, Salvia coccinea. The moth wasn’t pollinating or fluttering, just pink and still. I walked by later and the moth was in the same position.
What a lovely place to rest, to nap, to sleep!
Finally, summer’s Death Star heat grip has loosened: Central Texas received much needed rain and our temperatures have cooled–a bit. Afternoons are warm, but tolerable, mornings and evenings are quite lovely; the gardener and her gardens rejoice! In response to the rain, non-native, but naturalized Oxblood Lily, Rhodophiala bifida, have popped up overnight from their cozy bulbs snuggled in the ground, delivering atop their fleshy stems resplendent red flowers for all to admire.
The lilies are fresh as daisies, but you’ll notice the results of August’s heat in the foliage of the Giant Liriope situated behind the lilies.
Here sit three of the dozen-or-so groups of Oxblood Lilies in my back garden, showcasing their rich crimson colors.
A closer look…
Accompanying the lilies are native Inland Sea Oats, Chasmanthium latifolium, Mexican Feathergrass, Nassella tenuissima, and some summer-weary Iris foliage.
The weekend was cloudy and drizzly, but today the sun reappeared and the lilies shone.
The Oxbloods will bloom a couple of weeks and it’s likely other clusters will pop up. I never remember where I’ve planted the bulbs until the flowers arrive and demand their share of garden attention. In the past, this glorious event occurred in late August or early September, but as our hot and dry period stretches into actual autumn, the flowers don’t appear until late September or early October. Once the blooms are done, attractive grassy foliage emerges and remains winter hardy. Only the warmth of late spring will end the lily foliage, the bulbs resting in the soil during hot summer months, until autumn’s first rain beckons the blooms back.
Native rain lilies have also emerged with the rain, their sweet white blooms blanketing roadway medians and many neighbors’ lawns. Regretfully, I don’t grow any of the native lilies and must rectify that missing garden link.
But for now, I appreciate what I have!
Not this sort of cow pen! (Though they look quite content.)
Nor this kind of cow pen–which is apparently a maternity pen. I didn’t know there was such a thing and judging from the look on this cow’s face, neither did she!
This is the kind of Cowpen I’m talking about–the flowery kind! Check out a couple of yellow daisy flowers bobbing above the grey-foliaged shrub and just in front of the yucca.
These are two Cowpen Daisy, Verbesina encelioides, plants that I popped into the ground in late May or early June. On a drippy day I walked Duke the Dog, poop bag in one hand, leash in the other and came across two seedlings tossed on the wet sidewalk in front of a neighbor’s house–where she grows scads of Cowpen Daisies. This was during the late spring/early summer rainy period, oh-so long ago. Sigh. I imagine the gardener tossed them as she weeded, maybe earlier that morning, as the seedlings looked fresh. I picked up the two abandoned plants and finished my walk with the dog-on-the-leash, the poop-bag-in-hand, and carefully cradled Cowpens.
I planted the seedlings in the front of my front garden, watered a couple of times, and promptly forgot about the garden newbies. Later in summer, I thought I’d lost them. But here they are, all grown up and ready to bloom!
Cowpen Daisies are native to a wide range of the Continental US and are an annual plant. Being annuals, they grow from seed, flower during the growing season and set seed, then die in the winter. The fallen seeds germinate in the ground during the next spring, grow, flower, and die, thus continuing the cycle. The neighborhood school is just across the street from the Cowpen house and I can attest that these wildflowers seed out prolifically–like so many other native wildflowers. The school garden now grows quite a few Cowpen Daisies without assistance from students or adult volunteers.
I have two individual plants now, but that number will at least double by next year. Many of my natives re-seed joyfully, so this doesn’t scare me, but will entail weeding out unwanted seedlings. Who knows–perhaps next year, during a rainy period, I’ll be tossing out extra seedlings and someone will pick them up for their garden!
Cowpen foliage is attractive with a nice grey-green tint and interesting serration around the edges of the leaves. Cowpens like the soil dry and the sun at its fullest. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center indicates that Cowpens are especially important for butterflies, but what I’ve observed are a variety of native bees working these blooms.
My best guess is that this little bee is an Oil-collecting bee, or Melittidae.
These two Cowpens fit nicely in their new garden community. For now, they’re a bit overwhelmed, but once they get going with more of their kind, the pops of pretty foliage and sunny daisies will complement the native grasses and shrubs.
