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Texas mountain laurel (Sophora secundiflora)is a flowering evergreen shrub or small tree that has been a favorite plant for home and commercial landscaping in Central Texas for a long time.
Even then, however, I did have a sense that it was highly desirable to have a mountain laurel in your yard. For one thing, in early spring it puts out fragrant blooms that look like hanging clusters of purple grapes. People with more sensitive noses than mine said the blooms smelled like Grapette and grape Kool-Aid.
In elementary school I had at least one teacher who would get a little perturbed when a student brought her a gift of mountain laurel flowers. She immediately would put them on an open-window sill or even out in the hall when it was too cold for open windows. Because of that teacher, for many years I thought people would pass out if closed up in a room with mountain laurel flowers.
When we ambled home from elementary school, it was always fun to search the ground under a mountain laurel for the hard red “laurel beans.” We never got tired for rubbing a bean on the sidewalk until the friction made it hot, then sneaking up to touch it to the bare skin of a friend and yelling, “Red hot!”
Of course, at that time I had no idea these mountain laurel seeds also are called mescal beans and once were ground into powder by Native Americans to use in hallucinogenic ceremonial potions. Reportedly, when it was discovered the toxic mescal beans were killing people, they switched to peyote.
Homeowners in my childhood neighborhood undoubtedly sought out Texas mountain laurel to plant in their yards because it has bright-green evergreen foliage, pretty purple flowers, and grows well in calcareous soils. The perfect shrub for much of San Antonio and the eastern Hill Country. Today we also pay special attention to the fact it is so drought tolerant and is rarely browsed by deer.
Except for very small seedlings, I find mountain laurels difficult to transplant. However, they are widely available at nurseries in a range of sizes. Once established, Texas mountain laurel never needs irrigation.
As a boy in San Antonio and much later as a homeowner in the Boerne area, I always regarded Texas mountain laurel as one of the most desirable Texas natives, a really special little tree. I haven’t changed my mind, but in the last few years I have been surprised to learn that Texas mountain laurel can be seen in a very different light. Not far west of here in limestone hills of Real and Uvalde Counties there are dense thickets of mountain laurel that have the same effect as the thickest Ashe juniper (cedar) brakes. Practically no grasses and forbs can grow in those areas because of low light and dry soil. For ranchers in those areas, mountain laurel is more of a dreaded nuisance than cedar.
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**ARCHIVED POST AUTHOR: ward
