Archive for March 6th, 2009

Texas bluebonnets

It’s warmer now and there are real, current signs of spring’s arrival:

1. People have stopped carrying coats with them “just in case” this week.

2. Our chickens laid their first egg of the new year.

3. The ornamental peach is in bloom.

All this means it’s time to watch for Texas bluebonnets. Don’t blink, or they will have bloomed and gone until next spring.

Bluebonnets were born in Texas before statehood and before settlement. It is said Texas is the only place these unique, small blue flower of the lupine variety grow.  There is a lovely Commanche Indian myth about the creation of the bluebonnet. Spanish missionaries planted them around the missions in colonial days.

In 1901 the bluebonnet won over the cactus flower and the cotton boll to be the Texas State flower, and subsequently there was some hot politicing about whether it was the Lupinus subcarnosus, which grows on coastal plains, or the larger, showier Lupinus texensis which was the  True Blue Texas Bluebonnet. In 1971 the Legislature solved the problem by effectively saying any bluebonnet is a representation of the Texas State flower.

The Texas Bluebonnet actually has five separate known varieties, and among these are wild and commercially planted sub-types. In Fort Worth, the plant appears every spring in meadows and beside freeway on-ramps, in the planters of fancy hotels and in everyday people’s yards.

Is it too late to plant? It’s best to plant bluebonnets in the fall, but new, improved seeds now germinate in as little as ten days. Because bluebonnets are actually legumes, like clover, alfalfa, and beans, growing them actually improves instead of depletes soil. Read more about growing bluebonnets, in addition to a careful account of the politial events that led to their becoming the state flower, in information on Texas bluebonnets and guidelines for growing them from Texas A&M University.

Photo credit: Charles and Clint