Natural History Wanderings

Updated with New Listings

Wildflower Watching in Brenham Texas  has a Texas Wildflower update for March 23, 2014:

Bluebonnets are getting more plentiful on Hwy 290 East from Houston. The bluebonnets surrounding the Welcome sign are beautiful now, but will really be full in another few days to a week. There are also a lot of Indian paintbrush along Hwy 290.

I was driving from Katy to Austin yesterday – I-10 had flowers, but Hwy 71 from Columbus to Bastrop was gorgeous! We hope our roads will be as beautiful in a few weeks, but if ours don’t develop you can certainly find them there!

Wildflower Haven has a March  21 report for Hill Country:

Spent a few hours this past Friday checking on bluebonnet rosettes in the Hill Country.  Mainly I focused in the RR-1320, RR-1323 and Willow City Loop areas.

I did find healthy rosettes in several spots.  I was pleasantly surprised that I saw as many as I did. However, it really looks very dry out there and a few spots I usually expect to see a few rosettes had none.

Danz Cabins – PR 1: I did not find any bluebonnet rosettes in the field in front of the Danz Cabins along PR 1.  In really good years this field usually has good coverage.

RR-1320: I spotted several nice spots of rosettes along RR-1320 closer to RR-1323.  I stop at one spot and took this phone camera shot. The area was about 6×15′ and fairly well covered with rosettes.

RR-1323: Stop at one spot where there are some rock cuts with cactus and found a fair coverage of rosettes mixed in with dead foliage.  Much of RR-1323 looked really dry, but the rosettes were green and healthy.

Willow City Loop:  The south end right before the road dives down into the valley had the most obvious coverage along the road. Some spots along the Loop were not showing rosettes.  The north end was hit and miss at times, but a few spots showed promise. Again most of Willow City Loop looked really dry. The creek that runs along Click RD and part of the Loop was pretty much without water.

Bottom-line: A good coverage of bluebonnet rosettes exist out there in the Hill Country. Based on what I saw Friday, I would imagine that wherever the fall rainfall was average or above average there are likely to be bluebonnet rosettes in the usual spots. However, without some really good rain events soon, I think the season could be short and with some less than dramatic displays. We are drastically behind in rainfall for January and February.

Wild About Texas Wildflowers adds:

A reconnaisance trip from Austin 3-21 to scope out prospects for the next few weeks proved fruitful. The median on 71 between Austin and Bastrop is looking pretty good already and should continue to improve in the next few weeks. We hit several routes in Washington, Austin, and Fayette Counties and found numerous sightingsscattered along the way in the early stages of bloom – 390 (La Bahia Tr.) especially at the Old Baylor site in Independence, Flewellen Rd., 159 from Bellville to Fayetteville, FM 2502, FM 2754, Cemetery Rd. Due to time restraints, we didn’t get to all the roads we usually do in these areas. All the routes we did get to showed promise of some spectular displays in the next few weeks.