- Author: Tina Saravia
A recent trip to the southwest awakened my interest in wildflowers. The first 3 days were glorious - beautiful vistas, clouds of every shape and form, orange to red sunsets in New Mexico that made me want to move out there and live in the pueblos.
On the 4th day, however, as we descended into the plains, began the flat, dry desert, with occasional shrubs, no curves to the road, just straight on, and it went on and on and on, and on. Then we reached the Texas border, the same dry scenery, with a few different color oil rigs dotting the landscape and wind turbines that stretched for miles and miles. It went on and on, and on.
On the 5th day, we started a gradual ascent, then blue flowers start to appear, yellow flowers, pale yellow, red, light red... Think Monét painting, but brighter, more vivid, as big as the Texas sky. This roadside painting went on and on and on, and on.
My sister-in-law told me later, when we finally got to Round Rock, that we've arrived during wildflower season.
I've included here a few pictures. GG, my super nice sister-in-law got me a fold-out guide to the native wildflowers of Central Texas. But like any guide, it only shows me the close-up pictures of the flowers, in its best form.
I did a little extra searching online and found this very helpful website, www.wildflowers.org
It is the website for the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin Texas. The website features The Native Plant Information Network, a database of more than 7,200 North American native species.