Sideoats Grama, the state grass of Texas, has beautiful flowers--in the fall sun, they glow gold and red and orange, but seen close up, there are lavenders, purples, and greens in the same florets.

What bluebonnets in a field should look like--this was the spring of 2001, not the spring of 2002, which was much dryer. Bluebonnets do best when other plants are grazed or mowed low and there is ample winter rain.

Dayflowers in the upper dry woods. A small area of the upper dry woods is actually lush, with thick groundcover, in a wet year. This again was the spring of 2001.

Antelope-horns is a milkweed, the first to bloom in our area. The "balls" of flowers look like popcorn balls scattered across the fields. This picture is from 2001, but this spring, 2002, I saw a monarch butterfly laying eggs on an antelope-horns milkweed.

This false foxglove, Penstemon cobaea, grows on gravelly, rocky, and other well-drained slopes in the area; it's one of those wildflowers that seems to catch and hold the light.

Water willow, Justicia americana, thriving in the creek in the spring of 2001. It's a very clean-looking, attractive water plant; it should be found in more water gardens.

Twin-leaf senna does not at first make anyone think of a legume, but it is. On our place it grows in lighter upland soils...brown with some sand or gravel, all the way to gravelly-rocky.

Stonecrop, aptly named, grows out of bare rock, the same sites where we find liverwort (that black stuff) and lichens. Stonecrop is a succulent; it shows up first as pale pink knobs, then looks like tiny pink fingers, and eventually develops bright (very bright) lemon-yellow flowers. In 2001, we had sheets of it all over the bare rock; in 2002, much dryer, we have only scattered patches.

Matelia biflora is a "milkvine," in the milkweed family. So far we've found two in this genus on the place; the other is Matelia edwardsensis. The one I'm hoping to find some year is Matelia reticulata, which is one of the prettiest small vines I've ever seen...it could happen; last year I didn't notice this Matelia.