Texas spring flowers | My Gardener Says…

I was recently visiting with a neighbor as we stood in front of one of my gardens and she commented that a rosette of American Basket flower, Centaurea americana, looks deliciously edible. (I’m not sure if I’d add Basket flower to my salad greens, but it has been used for traditional medicine purposes.) As we chatted, I realized the particular specimen that was the focus of our conversation also shared close space with several other lovely foliage types.

Basket flower forms a dramatic rosette, but peeking through those glorious leaves are ferny Common Yarrow, Achillea millefolium, rounded, lobed Henbit, Lamium amplexicaule, and palmate-leafed Carolina geranium, Geranium carolinianum. Except for the non-native Henbit–one of our earliest bloomers and welcomed by pollinators–all of these plants are native to Texas and in many parts of the Americas.

A closer look at these luscious leaves shows another in their midst, also wanting attention for its leafy action–Caterpillars or Blue Curls, Phacelia congesta

A different Blue Curls planted itself directly on a Basket flower rosette, both settled in the crack of a cement driveway, no less. They’ll have to battle it out for survival once spring growth and blooming begins. The smart money is on the Basket flower, as it tends to get much larger than the Blue Curls–but I wouldn’t count out the curls, they’re a tough bunch.

Both Henbit and Blue Curls are having a moment this year in my garden. Scads of them have seeded out and are growing in profusion!

Another nice foliage vignette in a different area of the garden features a purposely planted Twistleaf Yucca, Yucca rupicola, overseeing two volunteer annuals (poppies and geraniums) and one volunteer perennial shrub, Rock Rose, Pavonia lasiopetala. All will bloom in spring, two will disappear afterward (poppies and geraniums), but the Rock Rose will be foliaged and floraled through the growing season.

Spring flowers are bursting out of their winter doldrums and the foliage of those bloomers is also revving up for its part in the garden show. Foliage and flowers form a partnership that are the stuff of gardens, each adding their particular beauty and role in a diverse community of plants.

Ah, the smell of spring in the Texas air!

Northwest face of my Mountain laurel.

The grape-soda-spring-in-the-air smell, that is.

Southeast side

Texas mountain laurel, Sophora secundiflora, is at its peak of bloom in Austin and such a spring cliché, that I’m reluctant to add my photographic two-cents worth to the throngs of purple-powered photos appearing on FB, Nextdoor and elsewhere.

Clearly, I’ve overcome my hesitation.

Walking, riding my bike, and driving in the car, I frequently get a snoot-full of this heady, cloying fragrance, reminiscent of grape soda.

Texas mountain laurels are everywhere and why not? They are beautiful small trees year-round and stunningly beautiful trees during their short spring bloom period. The blooms are early this year, along with the awakening of so many other plants. Mild-to-warm winters and weird premature spring action has become the norm over the past couple of decades in Austin. There was a time that mountain laurels bloomed consistently in March–sometimes earlier, sometimes later–but rarely in February.

Times have changed and the climate has changed.

I don’t mind an early spring, though that might mean an early summer and given the long, warm season in Texas, I don’t know many, myself included, eager for that particular scenario. But pollinators are pleased at the beginning of floral bounty and who can complain about that?