What is your favorite wildflower of the Llano Estacado region? What is your favorite Xeriscape plant? I love plants -- I love both the ability of the natives to survive our harsh and varying climate, and I love how growing the natives of neighboring arid regions connect me with the many beautiful places within a few hundred miles of my home.
Many people may pick the chocolate daisy as their favorite wildflower of our area -- the wonderful smell of chocolate that fills the air in mid-morning is so delicious. I know some folks who would choose the wonderful pink sand penstemon that graces sandy soils in May, its clouds of pink blossoms shimmering in the breeze. Others may pick the Spanish daggers or candles of the Lord, the huge white spires shooting high above the 10-foot-tall trunks of the species.
Others that come to mind are the large white blossoms of the cooperia rain lily, once the favorites of early Midlanders, who transplanted them to their yards. They flowers still emerge after substantial rains, even through cracks in the sidewalks of downtown. Another wondrous flower is the bladderpod, or "Tela de Oro," the "cloth of gold" that can cover square miles of landscapes in March. I know one person who might say selenia, a rare yellow mustard that lines playa and draw bottoms at the same time, for she always looks for it on Valentine's day.
The same person also may say the mountain parsley, a root vegetable for the Comanches and all those before them, and a species that likes more gravely soils at the edge of the Llano Estacado. Oldtimers might say they love algerita the most, for its incredibly sweet bloom in April, and the delightful tart jelly that once brought families of early settlers to its favored habitats for berry picking picnics.
Within 100 miles of Midland more than 1,500 species of plants grow in the wild, unaided by the hand of man, dependent on the vagaries of rainfall and grazing practices. I love knowing what lives here, and discovering new plants I have not noticed before. Macro-photography has made visible characteristics seen before only with microscopes, opening the viewer's eyes to incredibly intricate detail that tells more of the story of the plant's life.
Before World War II people gardened with pass-along plants, brought with them from wherever they came, and with plants found growing wild in the landscape closer by. Texas sage leads the list of these old-time garden plants gathered from the wild with love, as does the grape-scented mountain laurel. In the late 1970s some people tired of planting the poorly adapted plants brought by refrigerated semis in plastic pots from California growers and began growing native plants much more suitable for survival. Horticulturalists in Colorado labeled the new movement Xeriscape. Only in recent times as water restrictions have become a daily fact of life, and as more people realize the water restrictions never again will be lifted (until a dying hurricane fills the reservoirs for a few years), Xeriscape plants now are becoming more popular.
A number of people have been growing Xeriscape plants for more than 30 years on the southern Llano Estacado. We would love for folks to take photographs of their plants, so we can develop a comprehensive photo library on Facebook on the "west texas xeriscape gardeners" page, to share with gardeners who in the future finally will accept reality that water is finite, and discover what many people already know -- there are hundreds of species of beautiful plants that survive our climate, and that it is absolute fun to discover the many species of dancing butterflies that attend them. Xeriscape gardens celebrate life.
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