By Bill Ward
Published in The Boerne Star on June 17, 2003
As Boerne continues its fast development, it is common to hear a resident lamenting about a favorite field of wildflowers or patch of trees or pretty landscape that suddenly has been scraped away to prepare a construction site.
My friend Rebecca Yoder recently wrote about a field on the I-10 access road:
In the last five years I’ve passed that field at least a thousand times. I pass by it on the way to Boerne. I pass it on the way to drop off the kids at school. But today it looks different. It’s full of something purple. I slow down. What could be blooming? I pull over, park the car. I walk around. Lots of cars whiz by.
Don’t they see it? I am standing in the middle of them. There must be hundreds of long, purple, flowering stocks. The butterflies seem to be enjoying them too.
I take mental notes on the leaves, stems, and flowering parts so I can look them up in one of my books. I wonder why they grow here and not in my yard?
I keep walking. I notice lots of other plants with each step. Those little trees up front are not live oaks. They have little black berries. Could they be toothache trees? Larkspur, golden dahlea, square-bud primrose, gaura, ruelia, camphor weed, Engelmann daisy, fall gumweed. The list goes on and on.
Too soon I have to run off to my арpointment. The next time I go to Boerne, I will leave just a little early so I can stop and examine more, maybe gather some seed.
But next time, I find a bulldozer scraping away my flowers. Ripping out the toothache trees I’ve just discovered! I stop the car and talk to the machine operator. Would he mind if I walk around? Perhaps it wouldn’t be a problem if I dug up a few things? Did he know that tree over there was a red oak? Perhaps the owner would really like to keep it to provide welcome shade for those parked cars?
Everything is gone now. They scraped all the soil into a big pile. I still pass that field on the way to Boerne and back. I pass it on the way to drop off the kids at school. But today, it looks different.
Neither Rebecca Yoder nor probably any other member of the Boerne Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas is interested in protesting development around Boerne. However, there is an interest in saving some of the native plants that will be replaced by buildings or concrete. One important reason for this is to ensure that the natural biodiversity of this area is maintained. By transplanting the local native plants, we can help to sustain the local gene pools.
The Boerne Chapter of NPSOT has a Plant Rescue Committee that seeks to locate property scheduled for construction and to ask permission to remove desirable native plants that would otherwise be destroyed by construction. These plants will later be offered to native-plant gardeners at the Cibolo Nature Center’s spring native-plant sale or donated to school gardens and other public gardens.
After permission is obtained to explore a future construction site, the Plant Rescue Committee identifies native plants that are good landscape plants and then works a few hours each week to dig and pot the plants.
Rescued native plants include perennial wildflowers, bushes, and very small trees (transplanting large trees requires professional equipment and experience). Once any construction is started on the site, the plant rescue is terminated.
The Plant-Rescue Committee welcomes information on future construction sites. I can pass on any information you might have (wewkaw@aol.com). Anyone, member or nonmember, wishing to participate in the on-site rescue is welcomed. That activity is a great way to learn to identify native plants and to see the conditions in which they thrive in nature.
E-mail Bill Ward at wewkaw@aol.com.
