By Bill Ward
Published in The Boerne Star on January 23, 2004
Operation NICE! (Natives Instead of the Common Exotics!) commonly selects a native plant of the month which might be new to many home landscapers.
The February Plant of the Month is cenizo (Leucophyllum), which is familiar to almost everyone.
This time our selection is not to educate gardeners about a little known native plant, but instead to remind them of the virtues of an old favorite.
When I was a boy in San Antonio, a lot of people called this shrub “senisa”.
It also was known as purple sage, but is no relation to salvias, the “true” sages.
Other common names are Texas silverleaf and Texas ranger. In some places cenizo is called barometer bush, because it tends to bloom profusely just after rains.
The shrub is an attractive landscape shrub because of the dense gray or bluegreenish-gray foliage.
“Cenizo(a)” is Spanish for “ashy,” a reference to the ashy-gray color of the South Texas variety.
Small oval leaves remain on the bushes all year, although the foliage thins out somewhat in the winter.
Cenizo is one shrub that looks good at the hottest times of the year. It is so drought resistant that it is favored as a decorative plant for highway rights-of-way and ranch gates.
Cenizos are appropriate for a variety of gardens. In more formal settings, cenizos commonly are maintained as clipped hedges.
However, they look great in my yard growing in their natural form. Some plants may get up to several feet wide and over eight feet high.
The deer in our subdivision seldom browse cenizos, but in late fall some bushes are thrashed by restless bucks.
In the wild, cenizo (Leucophyllum frutescens) is part of the brush of the Brush Country of South Texas and northeastern Mexico.
This widespread species also is indigenous to parts of the Edwards Plateau. It is not reported in Kendall County, but cenizo occurs naturally as close as Real, Kerr, and Gillespie Counties on the west and Bexаг. Hays, and Travis Counties on the east.
Two other species along with L. frutescens grow in the TransPecos region.
A fourth Texas species is found only in the southernmost tip of the state. Northern Mexico has seven or eight species.
A few times a year, depending on the humidity and rains, cenizo is covered with small pinkish-purple or violet bell-shaped flowers.
Those bloom periods can transform the usually bleak rolling plains of South Texas and hills of northern Mexico into awe-inspiring purple landscapes, at least for a few days.
When they are in bloom, cenizo bushes emit a perfume that attracts swarms of butterflies and bees.
As a kid, I used to think “The sage in bloom is like perfume” line from the song “Deep in the Heart of Texas” must be referring to “senisa.”
The late Benny Simpson, horticulturist at Texas A&M, developed several good-blooming cultivars from South Texas and Trans-Pecos species. These varieties go by nursery-trade names of Green Cloud, White Cloud, Compact, and Thundercloud, among others.
Several varieties of cenizos also were introduced from Mexico by horticulturists such as Lynn Lowrey, Pat McNeal, and Tim Kiphart.
The Boerne Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas provides free care instructions for cenizo at the nurseries participating in Operation NICE!: Barkley’s Nursery Center, Boerne in Bloom Garden Center, Fair Oaks Nursery, Hill Country African Violets and Nursery, Maldonado Landscape and Nursery, and Where Wild Things Grow Native-Plant Nursery.
