Ibervillea lindheimeri
This gourd has tubular flowers with 5 spreading lobes, creamy-yellow, about 1/2 inch wide. Leaves are 1 1/2-3 1/4 inches long with 3-5 lobes, deeply cut and fine-toothed. The fruit is over 1 inch in diameter, with green stripes when young, but bright red when ripe. Before maturing it has a spiny-looking green covering which […]
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.
Hesperaloe parviflora
Not a yucca, this member of the Century-Plant family produces soft, yucca-like, evergreen leaves, 2-3 ft. in length, crowded on the perennial’s short, woody base. The flower stalk rises 5 ft. and bears showy, coral-colored, tubular flowers occur on arching, wand-like, pink stems. Leaves are plum-colored in winter; blue-green other times.Coral Yucca is evergreen, drought-resistant, […]
Helianthus maximiliani
The several tall, leafy, unbranched stems of michaelmas-daisy or maximilian sunflower grow to a height of 3-10 ft. Leaves are long and narrow, up to 10 inches near the bottom and as short as 2 inches near the top. They are alternate, coarse and hairy, slightly wavy on the edges, often folded lengthwise, slightly toothed […]
Eysenhardtia texana
Texas kidneywood is an unarmed, much-branched shrub, 3-10 ft. tall, with an open, airy structure and gland-dotted, aromatic, resinous leaves and flowers. Its spikes of white flowers are fragrant, as are the deciduous, finely divided leaves. Leaves up to 3-1/2 inches long, consisting of a central axis and as many as 40 small leaflets, each […]
Engelmannia peristenia
The several stout stems of this perennial usually grow 2 ft. tall and are branched above to form a rounded crown. Long-stalked, yellow, eight-petaled flowers open in late afternoon then fold under in intense heat and sunlight the next day. There are few to several flowers in the terminal clusters about 1 1/2 inches across. […]
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 […]
Castilleja indivisa
One of the popular paintbrushes, this showy annual or biennial grows 6-18 in. high. Its several unbranched stems form clumps topped by bright-red, paintbrush-like spikes. The flowers are less conspicuous than the bracts and greenish at the base, they are subtended by showy, typically red-tipped bracts. They sometimes produce a light yellow or pure white […]
Campsis radicans
A high-climbing, aggressively colonizing woody vine to 35 ft., climbing or scrambling over everything in its path by aerial rootlets. The pinnately compound leaves up to 12 inches long, with typically 3 to 6 pairs of leaflets and a single terminal one. Leaflets dark green on the upper surface, lighter on the lower, broadly to […]