The wildflowers splash color across the fields and under the pines out here at Little Piney. Decorative and delightful to our eye, these blossoms are also very important to the ecosystem. Look up close, and you see that the blooms are little planets teeming with tiny flies and spiders. Or maybe I should say they are busy restaurants. Bees, butterflies, and moths dine on the nectar, and dragonflies zoom in for the live protein which they devour in large quantities. Hummingbirds, the omnivores, find both.
I appreciate the way wildflowers generously pop up on their own wherever the seeds have fallen. This is our first spring at Little Piney, so about every week, I am surprised by a new wildflower discovery. I’ll keep adding to my wildflower list as the summer progresses.
A great resource for learning more about Texas wildflowers is the Loughmiller list on the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center’s Website. My go-to for identification online is The Wildflower Index by Gary Regner Photography where images of Texas wildflowers are organized by color. On my bookshelf I have a the classic Roadside Flowers of Texas with its beautiful watercolor illustrations by Mary Motz Wills which is great to browse through on a rainy day like this.