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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published August 1994 in Volume XII, Number 4, of the Native Plant Society of Texas News, while Benny Simpson was president of the Society. As we get ready once again to hold our Annual Meeting (October 2-10 over Zoom) this is a good time to remember how it all got started.
I am not sure when I first met Carroll Abbott—it was sometime in the late 1970’s, at old Renner [Texas Research Foundation]. I remember him getting up from the coffee table, which took a while, for Carroll was well over six feet tall. But more than his typically long lean Texan appearance, I remember the twinkle in his eyes as he reached to shake hands. And that is what I want you toknow about him: his twinkle, his zest for living, his good humor, the sheer friendliness of the man—and how delightfully good he could make you feel while hunting seed and smelling wildflowers.
I guarantee you, there was plenty of time to smell the wildflowers on a field trip with Carroll. By the time I met him, Carroll had already quit the “rat-race” of high-pressure politics for a slower life-style, and when he saw a wildflower that needed smelling he would stop and most leisurely do a number one job on that flower.
Carroll has been called the “mid-father” of the native plant movement in Texas. In 1981, Representative Ernestine Glossbrenner of Alice introduced into the Texas Legislature HCR 110, which was signed into law by Governor Bill Clements, designating the fourth Saturday of April as “Texas Wildflower Day.” This act was helped along by Carroll who had registered himself as a lobbyist for Texas wildflowers. Not only was he the only wildflower lobbyist in Texas but probably in the world.
Carroll’s partner in promoting wildflowers was Dr. Mary Evelyn Blagg Huey, the President of Texas Woman’s University at Denton. These two had a rare rapport. Dr. Huey appointed Carroll as adjunct Assistant Professor of Biology. Together with Dr. Bill Beale they offered a wildflower seminar that was highly popular. They managed to have TWU’s botanical gardens declared a state native plant sanctuary by the Texas Historical Commission, complete with an historical marker.
On a ride across the campus they decided Texas needed a Native Plant Society. No problem. Carroll did the front running and TWU nurtured the Society for several years. They initiated a formal symposium in conjunction with Texas Wildflower Day, an old-fashioned dog and pony show with all the bells and whistles. Carroll was at his zenith for the first few years of Texas Wildflower Day. Not only did he put the program together, introduce the speakers and give out the awards, but he did this with all the verve and sparkle that Carroll Abbott was famous for.
Carroll’s third great love, besides his family and wildflowers, was the newspaper business. Printer’s ink was in his blood. He took great pride in his creation, the Texas Wildflower Newsletter, a small quarterly publication of anywhere from eight pages to twenty depending on what Carroll had to put in it. This newsletter was upbeat, fast-moving and full of Carroll Abbott’s “twinkle,” and it was eagerly awaited by his subscribers. It also was the sure barometer to Carroll’s inner feelings—you could gauge his mood from his most personal column “The Last Word” in every issue. In 1980 the Texas Wildflower Newsletter won the Golden Quill Award from the Men’s Garden Clubs of America. The Texas Wildflower Newsletter cost about $7.50 per year and went out to around 2200 subscribers.
it may have made a small profit, maybe not, but the Newsletter was the “enticer” for Green Horizons, the seed company he founded. Carroll sold seed from many wildflowers, he had the only complete list of wildflower books in the Southwest, and he was the pioneer of the wildflower calendar. His calendar was a wall chart about 2 x 3 feet in size. The months and days appeared in the middle; around the border were paintings of individual wildflowers, which in later years he used in note cards.
But while Carroll was known as Mr. Texas Wildflower and the “mid-father” of the native plant movement in Texas, he was also the king of the Texas bluebonnet market. Carroll Abbott didn’t publicize how big he was in the bluebonnet business because it was as competitive an enterprise as any, but he could sell you 50 seeds, one ounce, one pound, one ton, one truckload or one carload of Lupinus texensis seed and still have seed left. Of course some years the market was tight, other years you had a carryover. That was one of the good things about the bluebonnet business—the seeds were easily carried over.
Carroll was the progenitor of the scarified seed business. He had been raked over the coals by his clientele of industry, banks, and highway beautifiers because some years plantings didn’t really give a good show. He knew it was merely a matter of a hard seed coat, so instead of using acid, which is dangerous, Carroll bought a used cement mixer and a load of sharp sand and scarified his seed. I still personally prefer unscarified bluebonnet seed but if you need a show immediately, as Carroll’s customers did, then scarified seeds are the only way to go.
On the lecture trail, Carroll was at his best. if it was his first time in an area the speech hardly varied. In fact, Carroll didn’t waste too much time in researching the subject. He “winged it” from the word go, always with a twinkle, and his audience ate it up. He always spoke with his hat on—I never saw the hat off when he was on the speaker’s dais. First, he warmed the audience up by telling them that his name was Carroll Abbott, spelled with 2 r ‘s, 2 1’s, 2 b’s, and 2 t’s: therefore they never had to worry about the spelling.
Then he would pull out a cut-down beer case (the top and the bottom were cut to where they would fit over each other and they would be about 4 inches tall) and show how you could wrap newly dug small plants in wet newspaper and pack them in the bottom and then fit the lid over them. Kept cool, the plants would last a week. Merrily, with tongue in cheek, he would caution that any Baptists in his audience would have no beer cases on hand, of course, so they should use Dr. Pepper cases.
By now the audience was mesmerized, and Carroll would whip out a #10 paper bag and tell them about the “rock in the sack.” It was almost comical to see the blank stares turn into joyous remembrance as he explained to the listeners about trying to gather seed in a paper bag on a windy hill: just when you think you have enough, a puff of wind catches the sack and your seeds are strewn all over the mountainside. So first of all, you put a big rock in the bottom of the sack and then gather your seed.
It took several field trips with Carroll before I understood why Barton Warnock had nicknamed him “Flash,” and that you had to watch this plant hunter. Carroll was a master at quiet contemplation: he could stand and look down at a flower in the borrow ditch and solve the great problems of the world while you climbed the mountain to look at the plant at the top. Carroll saw no reason for all that exertion if the same type flower was already at his feet.
His good humor knew no bounds, and he enjoyed a joke on himself better than one on you. One fail, Lynn Lowrey, Carroll and I were in deep southeast Texas. We stopped along the way and Carroll bent over a 3-foot bush with maple leaves but clusters of dark blue berries and said, “Well, what kind of maple is this with this weird fruit?” Of course it was a mapleleaf viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium). Carroll had realized his mistake as soon as he said it, but before he could back off Lynn and I nailed him! We hooted at him for miles down the road. Carroll just curled up in a corner and sulked. Finally, as I was driving right along the Sabine River, Carroll said if I’d get a little closer to the bank and slow down he would just open the door and roll into the river without a quiver or fuss.
But the good times were ending. In the Fall 1982 edition of the Texas Wildflower Newsletter, Carroll told of the diagnosis of his kung cancer. Over the next two years you could keep track of Carroll’s health by the newsletter, his seed flyers and his presence or absence at Texas Wildflower Day. In April of 1983, President Huey presented her old friend the President’s Award, the most prestigious of the awards given. This would be Carroll’s last attendance at this beloved event. It hurt to see him sitting on the stage and feeling such great pain. One year later, the lungs show no cancer but a kidney with two small tumors is removed.
In the spring of 1983, I saw Carroll Abbott for the last time. It was appropriate that we had some time together in that most beautiful part of Texas—the mountains of the Trans-Pecos. Carroll had never been to the Guadalupes, so Carroll, his wife Pat, and I set aside a day to make the trip. With me driving Carroll’s station wagon, we left Alpine and took the western route (Van Horn) and headed for El Capitan and the Guadalupe Mountains.
Three plants were kind of a specialty with Carroll—the native species of Hibiscus, the different color forms of Salvia coccinia, and the genus Penstemon. The last plant I was able to show Carroll was Penstemon jamesii in full bloom, nestled at the foot of El Capitan. When we returned to Alpine via the eastern route Carroll was very tired, but as we pulled into Pecos around two o’clock that afternoon the old campaigner came out one more time. We wanted Mexican food but the town was strange. When Carroll saw the Chamber of Commerce sign, he instantly took charge, braced the chamber people and found us a place to eat—beautiful food in a side street cafe that I probably couldn’t find again. The next morning, I returned to Dallas.
In his last newsletter, in the spring of 1984, Carroll gave his readers the bad news. Cancer was in his neck and “shadows” were on his abdomen and right lung. His patron and good friend, Mrs. Lyndon Baines Johnson, was presented the President’s Award at the 1984 Texas Wildflower Day, and Carroll was too sick to attend. In one of his last flyers you could tell that Carroll was hurting as he gently remonstrated with his customers, “This catalog and price list wasn’t written as a typing exercise. It was put together from long years of experience to help us serve you better and you can help by reading it thoroughly. Thanks.”
The trail ended for Carroll in the early evening of July 5, 1984, in Sid Peterson Memorial Hospital. He was buried in Kerrville. On April Il, 1987, a Carroll Abbott Memorial was dedicated on the banks of the Guadalupe at Lemos Street, Kerrville, Texas.
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