Mahonia trifoliolata
This 3-6 ft. evergreen shrub, can reach 10 ft. in favorable conditions. The rigid, spreading branches often form thickets. Gray-green to blue-gray, trifoliate, holly-like leaves are alternate, 2-4 inches long, divided into three leaflets which have 3-7 lobes ending in sharp spines. Wood bright yellow. Flowers numerous, yellow, up to 1/2 inch wide with 6 […]
Melampodium leucanthum
A low, round, bushy plant with flower heads of 8-13 broad white rays surrounding a small yellow central disc. Plains Blackfoot or Blackfoot Daisy is a low, bushy, mounded perennial, usually 6-12 in. tall and twice as wide. It is covered with narrow leaves and 1 in. wide, white, daisy-like flowers. The white rays are […]
Hilaria belangeri var. belangeri
Curly-mesquite is a tufted, perennial grass sending out slender stolons which produce new tufts in the internodes. The flowering culms are to 1 ft. tall with a slender spike. Twisted, grayish-green leaf blades, 4-6 in. tall, are covered with long, silvery, curly hairs.
Eryngium leavenworthii
Leavenworth’s Eryngo is a prickly, 20-42 in. annual with a leafy stem, broadly branched in the upper portion. Almost the entire plant has some shade of purple. Flowers are minute, purple, and mingled with small, spiny bracts in an elongated, terminal, head-like cluster. These are subtended by conspicuous spiny-tipped bracts. The leaves are deeply lobed, […]
Dasylirion texanum
This short-trunked desert perennial is often mistaken for yucca. A 9-15 ft. flower stalk, bearing a 2-3 ft. spike of yellowish flowers, is subtended by a basal cluster of dark, bluish-green leaves with evenly-spaced spines and a wide, cupped base. The leaf cluster is 1 1/2-2 1/2 ft. tall. Trunks split open during dry spells, […]
Chrysactinia mexicana
Damianita is a 1-2 ft., bushy, low-growing, aromatic, evergreen shrub with stems rising in a mounded or bouquet form from a woody base. Leaves crowded on the twigs, dark green, up to 3/8 inch long by 1/16 inch or less wide, covered with green to black glandular dots visible under a 10x hand lens. This […]
Amorpha fruticosa
False indigo-bush is a 6-12 ft., loose, airy shrub which often forms dense thickets. Plants develop a leggy character with the majority of their pinnately compound, fine-textured foliage on the upper third of the plant. Leaflets velvety on the lower surface, margins frequently almost parallel, often abruptly rounded at both ends and with a notch […]
Bouteloua curtipendula
Side-oats grama is a bunchy or sod-forming grass with 2-3 ft. stems in erect, wiry clumps. Purplish, oat-like spikelets uniformly line one side of the stem, bleaching to a tan color in the fall. The basal foliage often turns shades of purple and red in fall. This is a perennial warm season grass; clump forming. […]
Bauhinia lunarioides
Native only to a few canyons in western central Texas and in adjacent northeastern Mexico, Anacacho orchid tree is a 6-12 ft., single- or multi-trunked shrub or small tree with small, light green, deeply cleft leaves. Delicate white to pale pink, orchid-like flowers with extended stamens appear prolifically in clusters. Fruit is a flattened pod.Anacacho […]
Asclepias tuberosa
This bushy, 1 1/2-2 ft. perennial is prized for its large, flat-topped clusters of bright-orange flowers. The leaves are mostly alternate, 1 1/2-2 1/4 inches long, pointed, and smooth on the edge. The yellow-orange to bright orange flower clusters, 2-5 inches across, are at the top of the flowering stem. The abundance of stiff, lance-shaped […]