Texas Native Plant Week-Autumn Stuff

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Tina

For this weeklong recognition and appreciation of native Texas plants, I’ve enjoyed sharing my experiences with using favorite perennial bloomers, trees and shrubs. Because it’s October and not March or April, I’ve focused on plants which are doing something now. Like other places, we in Texas enjoy our beautiful spring blooming plants, but we also admire those plants that take over the blooming work in the long, hot summer, and we glory in our “second spring,” also known as autumn. Many Texas native shrubs and perennials blossom throughout our long growing season, with resting periods between bloom cycles. Plus, our Texas plants take a well-deserved hiatus during the height and heat of summer–late July through August. Hunkering down is often the phrase used to describe that 8-10 week period of relentless heat and little, if any, rainfall.

And that’s during a “normal” year.

As we’re now enjoying our autumn blooms, today’s post is about the plants that are known specifically as fall performers. These plants are attractive during the other times of the year, but it’s in the autumn, September through November, that they are the stars, the divas, the lead actors on the garden stage. So enjoy the photo tour and remember–you too can plant and successfully grow these and many others in your gardens! All of these plants are carefree and low maintenance.

Check out your local nursery, online native seed sources like Wildseed Farms and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center for more information.

Frostweed, Verbesina virginica

Fall Aster, Symphyotrichum oblongifolium

Big Muhly, Muhlenbergia lindheimeri

Gregg’s Mistflower, Conoclinium greggii

Blue Mistflower, Conoclinium coelestinum

Texas Craglily, Echeandia texensis

White Mistflower, Ageratina havanensis

Goldeneye, Viguiera dentata

Cenizo, Leucophyllum frutescens

Yaupon Holly, Ilex vomitoria

Possumhaw Holly, Ilex decidua

American Beautyberry, Callicarpa americana

These are the “fall” plants in my garden. By no means is this a complete invoice of plants whose performance peaks in the autumn months–it’s simply what I grow and have room for in my gardens. As with the rest of the calendar year in Texas, there are many more beauties for the gardener to choose from.

Go forth, Texas gardeners–plant natives!

Texas Native Plant Week-Seeds-n-Berries

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Tina

It’s Texas Native Plant Week and to celebrate, I’m profiling some of the native plants in my gardens.

Mostly, I’m about blooms–flowers are what I love about a garden. Angiosperms are boss.

Flowers are pretty.

They’re bright and showy and are what initially attracts most people to a garden. But more importantly, flowers provide nectar and pollen for bees, butterflies and other assorted pollinators. Flowers and pollinators work and play well together. Flowers are one stage in the reproduction cycle of a diverse array of plants. Once plants grow, bloom and have been pollinated, they become seeds. Or berries. Or some form of plant DNA transport mechanism, ready to spread their genetic material to the next generation. Then, they attract a different crew of critters to eat them, poop them, and that glorious botanical cycle begins anew.

Obviously, all of my flowering natives produce seeds and often, the “fruits” are quite attractive. But for today, I’m focusing on the native plants in my gardens which showcase especially lovely or interesting berries or seeds desired by gardeners, especially gardeners who want to attract wildlife to their gardens and who doesn’t want to do that?

Texas in known for its spicy Tex-Mex food and there are many hot chile peppers used in the preparation of salsa, enchilada sauce, and other delectable yummies. However, the only native chile pepper in Texas is the Chile Pequin, Capsicum annuum.

This beautiful plant grows wild, in sun or shade ( it’s best in shade, I think), and is great for birds and husbands who love hot peppers.

I wrote recently about the American Beautyberry, Callicarpa americana. It’s a beautiful, deciduous, arching shrub with striking purple berries in late summer and fall.

Like the Chile Pequin, Beautyberry is a plant that works well in either sun or shade, though I prefer it in shade. In mass plantings, it’s stunning. It’s also a plant that attracts birds; sometimes those birds eat the berries almost as soon as they ripen and in other years, the gardener will be allowed to enjoy the beauty of those berries for a longer time.

Pigeonberry, Rivina humilis, is a small, ground-cover type perennial,

…with bright red, apparently delicious, berries. Producing berries during summer and fall, Pigeonberry supplies birds with a long season of nibbling. Another shade-appropriate plant, in my gardens the doves dine on those luscious berries.

Inland Sea Oats, Chasmanthium latifolium, is a hardy and resilient, but graceful grass which lends softness to any garden.

It has a wide native distribution and grows best in shade and dappled shade.

It will seed out profusely, but can be controlled with moderate weeding.

Possumhaw Holly, Ilex decidua, grows native in a large swath of the central to southern part of the United States, including Central Texas. It’s a small, usually multi-trunked tree with beautiful red-orange berries in the winter. The berries on my tree are just beginning their color turn, from green to red.

By late fall, the berries will be ready for eating by the many birds who enjoy them. On my Possumhaw, the berries generally remain on the tree through most of winter, well after Possumhaw loses its leaves (“decidua”, deciduous). It’s quite a lovely winter plant. Sometime in late winter, the Cedar Waxwings will swoop through and within a day, relieve the Possumhaw of its cheery berries.

Its kin, the evergreen Yaupon Holly, Ilex vomitoria, (one of my all-time favorite botanical names), is also a small tree with gorgeous and desirable berries,

…which have already turned red. The berries of the Yaupon are redder and shinier than the Possumhaw berries. Mockingbirds are always in this tree hopping and munching and tweeting warnings to others to stay away from their food source.

This is a small sampling of native plants with attractive-to-gardeners and valuable-to-wildlife food sources. There are other shrubs, trees, and perennials which produce lovely seeds, seed pods, and berries–I wish I had room for them all!

Texas Native Plant Week-Goldeneye, Viguiera dentata

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Tina

I’m continuing to mark Texas Native Plant Week which I began on with this post on Sunday. This week, I’ve written about Rock Rose, Pavonia lasiopetala and Turk’s Cap, Malvaviscus arboreus. Today, we visit Sunflower Goldeneye or Plateau Goldeneye, Viguiera dentata. Also, today is Wildflower Wednesday, so I’m joining with Gail at clay and limestone for our monthly tribute to all flowers wild.

Wildflower double prizes!

There are lots of lovely fall bloomers here in Central Texas, but none which brighten the garden more than the Sunflower Goldeneye–which I usually shorten to just plain old Goldeneye.

There’s nothing plain about this eye-catching ray of sunshine!

I love this blindingly cheery perennial sunflower! Native to Central Texas, west to Arizona and southward through Mexico and Central America, this plant packs a powerhouse of wildlife goodness. Goldeneye is the host plant for two butterflies, the Cassius Blue and the Bordered Patch (neither of which I’ve ever observed around my Goldeneye), but is also favored by bees and other butterflies. In my gardens, my hived honeybees are so all over the Goldeneye that often the plants look like they’re moving.

And once the flowers are spent and seed production begins? It’s a finch feeding fest!

Specifically, the Lesser Finch really love the seeds of Goldeneye. They’ve entertained me well this past week.

After the first hard freeze, the Goldeneye die to the ground. They’ll reappear though in late spring, growing fully and rapidly. During the course of summer, there will be a smattering of blooms, but mostly this perennial is all about its foliage in the summer, which are typical of sunflower leaves, large and rough textured. As Goldeneye fills out, it’s lush and neat in appearance. But after the first late August-September rains, Goldeneye burst forward in height and width and blossoms with masses of sunny, yellow blooms.

Like all wildflowers, there’s always some variability and difference between individual plants. Some Goldeneye flowers are larger, some smaller; some Goldeneye have very narrow petals,

…and some have wider petals.

I appreciate that each plant has its own “personality”–just a little different from its neighbor.

Goldeneye pair nicely with other fall bloomers.

These sunflowers grow and bloom in shade, but they get tall and lanky and tend to flop over once they are bloom heavy,

…which they will become in the fall. In mostly sunny spots though, they tend to remain more compact and stable.

As with other wildflowers, you should tolerate the rangy growth habit toward the end of Goldeneye’s growing season.

As lovely as most native plants and wildflowers are to us, they didn’t evolve to look pretty for people, but to provide food and cover for wildlife. Wildflowers are beautiful in our cultivated gardens for most of their growing season, but there’s almost always a short period of time after blooming and seeding, that wildflowers look spent from their wildflower production activities. Be patient with your native wild plants during that period of time.