NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY OF TEXAS

Kerrville Chapter
MAY NEWSLETTER

 NATIVES ON THE GROW

Dedicated to the understanding, preservation and enjoyment of the native flora of the Hill Country

 May Program:

 

“Hands-On” Hill Country Wildflowers
 

This month we will celebrate our Hill Country wildflowers with a guided walking tour of Riverside Nature Center.  Our guides will be from the Riverside Gleaners, a group that studies the identification and botany of Hill Country wildflowers.  Reading wildflower field guides or watching wildflower slide shows in Janaury are good ways to learn, however, nothing surpasses a walking tour through real wildflowers in prime season with a guide to answer your questions.  Once you have seen a 4-nerve daisy, it differentiates itself from the dozens of other “little yellow flowers”.  Feeling the texture of certain leaves (perhaps agarita?) is another identification clue that is not well accomplished with slides or books.

 The Gleaners “glean” (collect) seed from native plants in the summer and fall to sell to the public at nominal cost to ensure that folks have access to less common wildflowers.  Some of these seeds are planted at Riverside Nature Center to enhance their public display gardens.  Gleaners also study the use of the Wildflower Identifcation Key, based on botanical characteristics of the flower, and common characteristics of various plant families.

 For this meeting, we will meet at Riverside Nature Center at 2:00 PM as usual, and then break into smaller groups to examine the wildflowers and other native plants along the trails in the 5.5 acres of the Nature Center.  Sturdy walking shoes will let you tour the new tall native grases wildflower meadow and take the trail down to the river if you so choose.

 Calendar

Friday April 25  5:00-6:30 PM - “Members Only” Plant Sale at Riverside Nature Center  (for NPSOT and Riverside Nature Center members)

Saturday April 26  8 AM – 3 PM - EARTH DAY CELEBRATION & PLANT SALE –Riverside NatureCenter

Saturday, April 26  10 AM – 4 PM  Nativescapes Garden Tour in Fredericksburg by NPSOT – Fredericksburg Chapter  Contact Mike McBride at mikemc@ktc.com

Tuesday, May 6 at 2 PM  “Hands-On” Hill Country Wildflowers by the Gleaners at NPSOT-Kerrville Chapter meeting held at Riverside Nature Center, 150 Francisco Lemos St, Kerrville

Wednesday, May 7 at 9 AM:  Garden maintenance at the Kerrville Library Native Plant Garden, call John Quinby at 367-4612 for more information.

 

UPDATE:  EARTH DAY CELEBRATION  & MOSTLY NATIVE PLANT SALE

MEMBERS ONLY Pre-SALE  Friday, April 25  5:00 - 6:30 PM

 Nature Symposium & Festival: Saturday, April 26  8:00 AM – 3:00 PM

The Earth Day Celebration is co-sponsored by the Kerrville Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas and the Riverside Nature Center.  A quick summary is given below:

  9:00  Xeriscape for Hill Country by Larry Fagarason
10:00  Butterfly Gardening:  Secrets of Attracting the Fluttering Beauties by Deborah Payne
11:15   Recipes that Betty Crocker Never Gave You on organic gardening by Bruce Deuley
  1:00  The ABC’s of Rainwater Harvesting by Sandy and Raul Pena harvesting.  

Please note that this time is a correction from an error in our April newsletter.

  2:00   Lasagna Gardening by Marilyn Butcher of the Hunt Garden Club

Also don’t forget the raffle for a composter.  The winner will be notified by phone.

 We now have more information on the unusual plants obtained for us by Plant & Book Committee Co-chairs Gwynn Jackson and John Quinby for our enormous “Mostly Native Plant Sale”.  The Plant Sale will offer over 1200 plants representing 60 different species of flowering plants, shrubs, and grasses.  Some of these plants were grown specially for us for this event.  The sale will include big red sage, an endemic species native to south-central Texas, thought to be extinct until its rediscovery in 1987.  Other hard-to-find plants include blue mist flower (an incredible butterfly magnet), native ferns, purple skullcap, deer-resistant mealy blue sage, early-blooming Harvard penstemon, native passionflowers, western ironweed, pigeon-berry, Texas betony, damianita, square-bud primrose, native prairie larkspur, blue flax, fluttermill, tube tongue, skeleton plant and many others.  Shrubs will include anacacho orchid, elbow bush, pink mimosa, coral berry, flame acanthus, Texas honeysuckle, rose pavonia, kidneywood, silk tassel, agarita (highly deer-resistant) and more.  Experienced gardeners will be available to help with questions on the plants, where and how to plant them, growth habits, etc.  This is definitely the plant shopping opportunity of the season.  Shop early for the best selection! 

 THANKS for your donations to our Plant Raffle,

& Refreshments

 Natives of Texas of Kerrville donated a flat of baby blue eyes, an Alamo vine and .

Thanks also go to Ernest Treymayne for our wonderful refreshments.

 NOW BLOOMING

 
Photo by Priscilla Stanley

 CROW-POISON

Nothoscordum bivalve

You can probably find this common Hill Country native in your yard, a nearby field, or along the roadside.  It typically has narrow leaves 4 – 8 inches in length, and only 1/8 inch in width.  There are 6 to 12 white flowers in the terminal cluster (umbel), with each flower being about ½ inch wide.  This perennial will return in the Spring and Fall to decorate your landscape.

 Crow poison can be differentiated from the somewhat similar wild onion in three ways: 

1.  Crow-poison has no onion odor when crushed.  All parts of the wild onion have a characteristic onion odor. 

2.  Each crow-poison flower has 6 bright yellow-orange anthers; wild onion anthers are paler and less noticeable.

3.  Wild onion flowers from bulblets which fall to the ground and grow.  Crow-poison does not form bulblets.

(See Marshall Enquist, Wildflowers of the Texas Hill Country pp. 7-8.)

 INVADER ALERT!

 Do you have Malta Star-Thistle lurking on your property?  Would you recognize it if you did?  Enquist reported that this exotic introduced from Europe was rapidly becoming an abundant pest, and that was in 1987!  Last year, I had one volunteer plant.  I let it grow until it bloomed to be sure I knew what it was before I decided its fate.  After a few blooms, I removed it from the garden.  This year, so far, I have removed one and a half large leaf bags full of its progeny.  You can find the Malta Star-Thistle in Enquist on page 247.  You might decide to keep it, but at least you should be aware of its incredible ability to spread on disturbed ground.

  Please send any suggestions or comments on this newsletter to the Editor:  Priscilla Stanley at jpbstan@ktc.com