Window on a Texas Wildscape

Monday, February 18, 2019

UT Herbarium adventure

Our Blanco specimen will be mounted and processed for filing.

Last Tuesday, I accompanied Minnette Marr, a plant conservationist with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, to the UT Herbarium in Austin. Our mission: Meet with curator George Yatskievych and deposit a specimen voucher for an Edwards Plateau crestrib morning-glory (Ipomoea costellata var. edwardsensis), the uncommon plant I found in Blanco last November.

Curator George Yatskievych had a chinaberry voucher out as an example of how plants are pressed and filed.

But first, George gave us a detailed history and overview of the herbarium, which was established in 1890 and is currently housed on nine floors within the core of the UT Tower. The herbarium is part of the Billie L. Turner Plant Resources Center. More than 1 million plant specimens, most of which are pressed and dried, are preserved and filed by botanical families in metal, sealed cabinets. George also shared some special treasures....

The herbarium's "most famous speciemen," an Eupatorium organense collected during Captain James Cook's first Pacific voyage by English naturalist Sir Joseph Banks and Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander in 1768 in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.

Another rarity: Maytenus obovatus specimen collected by Charles Darwin in the Galapagos Islands in September 1835. The fragment was gifted to Cyrus Lundell by the director of the Royal Botanic Gardens KEW in England. Below is a copy of the original voucher, archived in England, with the missing fragment.
Here's a link to the original voucher in England!

Next George escorted us inside The Tower's core, where vouchers are archived on nine floors that look like this one.

Steel beams like this one run vertically through The Tower's core as structural reinforcement. The Tower, which was completed in 1937, rises 27 floors high.

One of hundreds of metal, sealed cabinets that contain vouchers.

Vouchers are filed by family, genus, and then species.

One of several archived Edwards Plateau crestrib morning-glory specimens.

Another Edwards Plateau crestrib morning-glory. Our voucher will go into this file.


Minnette Marr, George Yatskievych and myself with the Edwards Plateau crestrib morning-glory collected in Blanco last November.

UPDATE AUGUST 19, 2019

Karen Lundquist, a fellow member of my Highland Lakes Master Naturalist chapter, emailed me with this fun information:

"Hi, Sheryl. Last week, I went to the UT Herbarium with several other volunteers from the Wildflower Center and your morning-glory was one of the specimens the curator showed us during his presentation! What a good story."

Sunday, February 3, 2019

First daffodil and other beauty

First daffodil of the season! Wow, it's early, too!

Quince has started.

I missed the fragrant honeysuckle's blooming peak.

I spotted a Mexican honey wasp on the honeysuckle.

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Meadow mowed

BEFORE

James mowed the Meadow yesterday. The grass had gotten so tall that I was afraid the wildflowers couldn't get much sun. Okay, okay, it was time for a mow. Thank you, James! And thank you for taking pictures for me, too.

P.S. It's going to be a GREAT wildflower year! We've already spotted lots and lots of bluebonnets in the Meadow.

AFTER

Monday, January 28, 2019

Gardening notes

Note to myself: This afternoon I cut back these salvias pretty much to the ground. I try to do that every year or so because salvias get so woody and accumulate dead branches/limbs.

Monday, January 21, 2019

Blood moon over Blanco

Last night, James rounded up some snacks (see below) and headed to the back porch. I put on my thick, plaid "hobo" jacket and joined him. (I left his snacks alone.) I nearly got a crick in my neck from looking nearly straight up, but the effort was worth it. At the last minute, I ran inside for my SLR cameras and tried a few hand-held shots. I'm sharing one that came out close to decent. As soon as the moon reached its final phase, I called it a night and went back into our warm house. I must say that the "blood moon" eclipse made the moon look almost three-dimensional in the sky.

Monday, January 14, 2019

A January nursery?

Yesterday, from my office window, I spotted what I thought was a yellow garden spider's egg sac. I was THRILLED. But then I also thought, Hmm, I don't remember seeing a garden spider in the salvias and lantana. I grabbed my camera and headed outside. Upon closer examination, I could see it wasn't a garden spider egg sac. And wait a minute! Spiderlings skittered around when I reached toward the sac. They looked like.....

And then I saw HER--a green lynx mama, still protecting her egg sac! Really? And here I thought their adult life cycle ended with summer when the little ones emerged. Go figure! Mother Nature does whatever she wants to do whenever she wants to do it.

P.S. Can you see the spiderling underneath the mama's abdomen?

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Bye, bye, unwanted plants

Common chickweed (Stellaria media)

Beautiful afternoon today. So I gave up trying to work at my desk and headed for the back yard. Oh, my goodness. So much to do! Instead of feeling overwhelmed, I grabbed my fork and focused on one area at a time. I pulled chickweed, henbit, and field madder, all introduced species. Blah.

Shepherd's-purse is an introduced species as well. But we're letting them be weedy right now so pollinators can benefit from the flowers. Among the visiting insects were Mexican honey wasps, checkered skippers, and little flies. Cool!

I also pulled some hairyfruit chervil, which I learned is a native. The plants, though, remind me of knotted hedge parsley and begger's lice, two introduced species that I absolutely DESPISE. Maybe I need to read up some on the chervil before I pull any more. And oh, I saw my first tenpetal anemone blooms!