Brazos Bend

Down By the Brazos

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The Brazos in Flood ~ 2016

The longest river in Texas, the Brazos rises near the eastern boundary of Stonewall County, east and slightly south of the town of Lubbock. Flowing 840 miles across the state, it drains into the Gulf of Mexico roughly halfway between the Brazoria and San Bernard wildlife refuges.

Like any river, its course is far from straight. Communities that grew up along its banks testify to that by their names: Meeks Bend, Big Valley Bend, Horseshoe Bend.  Fort Bend, a blockhouse built to provide protection against Indian raids in the 1800s, eventually gave its name to Fort Bend County: the home of Brazos Bend State Park.

Brazos Bend provides everything that makes a park appealing: miles of trails, well-designed campgrounds, picnic spots galore, and a rich variety of plants and animals. Alligators are a primary claim to fame. Visitors often ask one another, “Have you seen any alligators today?” But there’s more to see than alligators. Here are a few sights that delighted me during a visit last Sunday.

An early arrival meant dew drops still could be found on this tiny leaf of a newly-energized grapevine (Vitis mustangensis).

Only feet from the parking lot, a diminuitive mushroom caught my eye. So tiny that the shadow on its left side was caused by mown lawn grass, it was just over an inch tall, with a half-inch wide cap.

For the inexperienced like myself, identifying mushrooms can be especially difficult. In this case, translucency offered a hint; this ice-like beauty may be a Marasmioid mushroom. My photo hardly does it justice, but you can see better examples here.

Fuzzier than the beach tea (Croton punctatus) found on our dunes, wooly Croton (Croton lindheimeri) lives up to its common name. According to Flora of North America, C. lindheimeri can be distinguished in part by the rusty/orange color on young growth, and sharp leaf tips. This plant certainly seems to fit the description.

An especially small morning glory, Ipomoea lacunosa has been described as “growing in low areas adjacent to creeks and rivers.” Proximity to the park’s 40 Acre Lake apparently suited these; their long vines twined over a substantial area. Sometimes called Whitestar, the diminuitive native blooms well into October.

Whitestar morning glory

Along a shaded trail, a Texas endemic I’d seen only once before was coming into bloom. Even smaller than the Whitestar morning glory, Texas pinkroot (Spigelia texana) is easy to miss. Other Spigelia species, like the woodland pinkroot, are more colorful, and often are used in garden plantings.

Spigelia texana at Brazos Bend
Spigelia texana bud and bloom at the San Bernard refuge

Butterflies, like this Queen nectaring at a species of Heliotrope, were common.

To my delight, native lotuses (Nelumbo lutea) still were blooming. A flower as much as twelve inches across can make it hard to include both the entire flower and a tiny damselfly in the same photo, but the pairing did bring a smile.

The most interesting find of the day involved this common garden spider, Argiope aurantia. When I first noticed it alongside the path, it didn’t seem to be doing anything other than what spiders often do: hang out in their webs awaiting prey.

Sometime later, once again passing the spider on the same path, I noticed something different. It seemed to be holding a ball of white silk unlike anything I’d seen before. Although the egg sacs of A. aurantia usually are larger, it’s possible that this was an egg sac in the making, especially since the spider clearly was ‘working’ the silk as I watched.

 
James Trager, a biologist/naturalist for the Missouri Botanical Gardens’ Shaw Nature Reserve in Gray Summit, Missouri described the process of Argiope egg sac creation in a comment on the Prairie Ecologist blog, edited here for length:

When the time comes for egg laying, the mother spider produces an uncompleted upper half of the egg sac’s papery outer layer, followed by an inverted basket of soft yellow silk, which will form a padded receptacle for the eggs.
Laid in a single mass, the eggs — held together by a slightly viscous fluid — are pushed up into the inverted basket by movements of the abdomen. Then, the layer of yellow padding around the egg mass is finished, followed by an outer, water-resistent but porous layer which protects the eggs and allows for gas exchange.
The whole process takes an hour or so.

In fact, it had been just over an hour between my sightings of this particular spider. Whether I found it creating a small egg sac may be debatable, but one thing is certain: whether coming or going along nature’s paths, the sights aren’t always the same.

 

Comments always are welcome.

Awaiting Equinox

~ shoreacres ~ 62 Comments
Early autumn color at Brazos Bend State Park ~ September 18

 

It is an old drama,
this disappearance of the leaves,
this seeming death
of the landscape.
In a later scene,
or earlier,
the trees like gnarled magicians
produce handkerchiefs
of leaves
out of empty branches.
And we watch.
We are like children
at this spectacle
of leaves,
as if one day we too
will open the wooden doors
of our coffins
and come out smiling
and bowing
all over again.
                 “November” ~ Linda Pastan

 

Comments always are welcome.
For more information on poet Linda Pastan, please click here.

A Brazos Bend Surprise

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Red Buckeye  flower ~ Aesculus pavia

I’d meant to spend an early April day roaming the wildflower and prairie trails at Brazos Bend State Park, but when I asked a ranger if there might be wildflowers blooming in other areas of the park, she grinned and said, “The buckeyes still are blooming. If you walk the Red Buckeye trail, you should find them.” And so I did.

I’d never heard of Red Buckeyes, and assumed they’d be akin to most wildflowers, growing low to the ground. Eventually, I realized the clusters of red and yellow blooms rising above the lush green leaves of shrubs were the flowers I was seeking.

Aesculus pavia, commonly called red buckeye, is named for smooth, shiny seeds that ripen in the fall; some compare them to the eye of a buck. The genus name refers to a kind of oak bearing edible acorns, while the Specific epithet honors 17th century Dutch botanist Peter Paaw.

Unlike many acorns, Red Buckeye seeds are poisonous and avoided by most wildlife. Like other Aesculus species, the seeds’ toxins are capable of causing muscle weakness and paralysis. Native Americans used crushed buckeye seeds and branches to slow the movements of fish, making them easier to catch.

On the other hand, the flowers attract hummingbirds, and their relatively early bloom makes them an important food source during the birds’ migration. Other nectar feeders that visit the flowers include eastern tiger swallowtail butterflies, bumblebees, and carpenter bees.

A variety of red buckeye, Aesculus pavia var. flavescens, occurs naturally only on the limestone soils of the western Edwards Plateau. Smaller than A. pavia, its flowers are yellow; where the species appear together, hybridization may produce yellow and red flowers.

By August, this deciduous shrub will begin to lose its leaves, but next spring I’ll look forward to finding its flowers again; perhaps I’ll be lucky enough to find both red and yellow blooms.

 

Comments always are welcome.

From Roadsides to Woodlands

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Fleabane in a clearing near Walden West

While the Deer-pea Vetch I featured in my previous post spreads its purple glow closer to the ground, a common spring companion plant rises above it, catching the eyes of motorists passing on the road.

Philadelphia Fleabane (Erigeron philadelphicus), our most common Fleabane species, received its common name because of a presumed — though unproven — ability to repel fleas. Its thread-like ray flowers, numbering in the hundreds, are the most slender among the Erigeron species.

Common as the flower is in open areas, particularly along roadsides, it also appears in woodland clearings. Each of these photos was taken in locations where I wouldn’t have expected to find these sun-loving flowers, but it’s obvious that full sun isn’t necessary for them to bloom.

Along the Red Buckeye Trail, Brazos Bend State Park

I’ve been puzzled for some time about field guides and websites that describe Philadelphia Fleabane’s ray florets as being either pink or white. I’d never seen a hint of pink on fleabane until I found several blushing buds at Brazos Bend State Park, and remembered; when it comes to nature, ‘expect the unexpected’ is good advice.

 

Comments always are welcome.

No Crocus? No Problem!

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Spring’s spiderwort

Oddly, perhaps, I can’t remember ever seeing crocuses in bloom. Years ago in Iowa, tulips were the preferred spring flower. Today, Gulf coast garden gurus advise that growing crocuses is fraught with so many difficulties — especially our heat and humidity — that failure is almost guaranteed, and that probably explains why I’ve never seen one here.

No matter. Even as more northerly gardeners begin posting photos of their glorious crocuses, several species of our native spiderworts (Tradescantia spp.) have begun to shine. On March 6, I found these newly emerged plants at Brazos Bend State Park, blooming in the midst of a dewberry thicket. The mixture of pink, blue, and lavender flowers was lovely.

After deciding that I’d found T. ohiensis, the so-called Ohio spiderwort, I learned an interesting detail about that species: “When touched in the heat of the day, the flowers shrivel to a fluid jelly.” That helps to explain why the edges of the pink pair shown above seemed to be liquifying in the noontime sun.

With their open structure and obvious pollen, the flowers were drawing a substantial number of hoverflies and metallic bees. The insects were able to navigate easily through the dewberry vines encasing the still-short flowers. In time, taller plants will make it easier for a photographer.

Still, even at ground level it was possible to record one of the most appealing features of spiderworts: their feathery stamens. Color-coordinated with the petals, they’re one of the prettiest sights of spring.

Comments always are welcome.