Bluebonnets are ready for their close-ups
Texas wildflower season is just getting started, and it looks like we’re in for a bumper crop. It will be a longer, better run than usual due to fall’s plentiful rains and recent warm temperatures, say state horticulturists.
Leslie Uppinghouse, a lead horticulturist at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, said the center’s annual wildflower forecast assessed the summer and fall weather — temperatures as well as the quantity and timing of rain — helping the spring wildflower and bluebonnet display.
Each spring, the wildflower trek has become a ritual. Texas families and dog owners head to parks and regions of the state thick with wildflowers to take photos among the blooms. It’s hard to imagine a child or pet raised in Texas who doesn’t have a snapshot of themselves crouched in a field of bluebonnets, smiling ear to ear.
“The nuts and bolts of it are that, yes, we’re going to get an above-average spring, and that is particularly true with bluebonnets,” Uppinghouse said. “Although (some parts of the state) had a terrible drought last summer, we had good rain in the fall, and that’s when bluebonnets and wildflowers germinate. If we continue to have 80-degree days and at night drop to around 50, the combination of cool and warm will extend the wildflowers and make for a great year.”
Many areas of the state were dry or in drought conditions last summer, but the bonus for wildflowers is that the drought killed off some of the grasses, making room for more and, potentially, bigger flowers. Then, the rain we had in the fall was enough for dropped seeds from last season to germinate before they settled in for the winter.
Bluebonnets — the state flower and the star of the show each spring — form low-to-theground rosette-like plants in the fall after they germinate, then sit through the winter, waiting for warmer spring temperatures to send up flower spikes with their purplish-blue blooms.
The drier an area’s fall was, the smaller and later the wildflower crop will be. Houston has plenty of bluebonnets blooming around town now, though San Antonio and Hill Country might not peak for a couple of weeks.
Larry Stein, a Texas A&M Agrilife horticulturist and an associate department head and professor in A&M’S Department of Horticultural Sciences, said Houston got a decent amount of rain and can expect a good season.
San Antonio and areas to the west were drier, so the flowers may not be as plentiful.
“Typically, we think of the Hill Country, with rustic trees and fields of bluebonnets, as having the real wildflower show in Texas. But, obviously, they grow everywhere,” Stein said. “They don’t grow in the best soils. You’ll find them in rockier, poorer soils, which is what makes them special in the Hill Country. They thrive in that part of the state when they get sufficient moisture.”
Soil there tends to be a rocky, well-draining “caliche” soil with limestone in it, Stein said. It may offer plants little nutrition, but bluebonnets, which are actually legumes even though they don’t produce beans, draw nitrogen from the air, internalize it and deposit it into the soil, acting as a natural fertilizer.
Bluebonnets and wildflowers such as Indian paintbrush, Indian blanket, purple coneflower, Texas yellowstar and evening primrose are native to Texas and adapt to the state’s various soil types. At the end of each season, plants drop seeds for the next year, and some seed coatings are thicker and hardier so they can survive the months until it’s time for germination, when the rain and sun have worn down their protective coating, Stein and Uppinghouse explained.
The weather, however, determines how well the spring blooms do. Areas that get an inch or two of rain per week early in the year can count themselves lucky. Even winter cold snaps such as the winter storm in 2021 or the cold temperatures we had around Christmas 2022 aren’t bad for the flowers. The snow from 2021 actually insulated and then added moisture for the 2022 crop, and Texas wildflowers likely enjoyed the cool weather from late last year, Uppinghouse said.
“They come up in September and October, make a rosette and hunker down for the winter,” Stein said. “As we get rain and the temperature gets right, they shoot up a seed stalk. They need an inch a week in January and February, but that’s asking for a lot. One to two inches every four to five weeks would be ideal.”
Uppinghouse said that she’s watching areas that suffered drought conditions to see how wildflowers fare there.
“Something like paintbrush has a finer seed, so it will be interesting to see how they do. My thinking is that summer was so dry and hot at the end that they may not have built up robust enough energy in the seed so it might be weak, but it depends on where they were,”
said Uppinghouse, based in Austin. “We did get some rain, but our bluebonnet seeds weren’t quite as thick or fat as in years past, so I’m surprised we’re getting as big of a show as we are. We got the rain at just the right time.”
Back in 1901, the Legislature named the the Sandyland bluebonnet (lupinous subcarnosus) as the state flower of Texas, but by 1971 the designation was extended to include five other similar species: the annual lupine (lupinus concinnus), Big Bend or Chisos bluebonnet (lupinus havardii), perennial bluebonnet
(lupinus perennis), Dune bluebonnet (lupinus plattensis) and Texas bluebonnet (lupinus texensis).
The most commonly spotted variety is the Texas bluebonnet
(lupinus texensis). It and the Sandyland bluebonnet are the only two endemic bluebonnet varieties, meaning that you won’t find them in any other state unless someone takes seeds there and plants them.
Those paying close attention will occasionally spot a white bluebonnet, but those are a mutation that randomly pops up. The rarest bluebonnet is pink, and it’s part of a legend that bluebonnets near the Alamo turned pink after the bloody battle.