DEFinitely Floral: Three Texas Wildflowers, One Alphabet Challenge

When I saw Terri’s latest Flower Hour challenge on her Second Wind Leisure Perspectives website, I wasn’t sure what I’d be posting. I enjoy photographing flowers a lot, so I knew the hard part would be deciding what to include and what to leave out. Here are three flowers — one for each letter of the challenge. The first two are field scenes, and the last is a macro, because I wanted to capture both the sweep of large fields and the intimacy of small details. My choices got easier when I realized that two of the flowers I’d picked were named after naturalists associated with Texas.

D — Drummond’s Rain Lily

Drummond’s Rain Lily (Zephyranthes drummondii) is a beautiful, delicate flower that appears after rain. True to its name, it waits for a good soaking and then sends up fragrant white blooms, usually a day or two after the rain falls. The blooms don’t last long — each flower opens in the evening and lasts only a few days (typically two to four), fading from white to a soft pink as it goes. This shot was captured in an open field in Pflugerville, Texas, just about 20 minutes from home. When a friend texted me about the spot, I didn’t hesitate. Knowing how quickly the blooms fade, I rushed out the very next day. I had never seen such a large field carpeted with these lilies.

E — Engelmann Daisy

The Engelmann Daisy (Engelmannia peristenia) has been featured here before, but what made me want to include it again was the sheer number of them on that field at the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge’s Doeskin Ranch. Hiking at Doeskin Ranch is a joy at any time of year. The tranquility and the diversity I find there are unparalleled, and on this day, the daisies stretched out in bright golden drifts.

F — False Dayflower

For my final image, I chose a macro of a False Dayflower (Tinantia anomala). I love how small this flower is and how much beauty it packs into it — each bloom is only about 0.8 to 1 inch (2 to 2.7 cm) across. Everything about it is lovely: the color, the little “face,” the stamens, and the pistil. Its two large lavender-blue petals sit above a single small white petal, and the whole bloom really does look like a tiny doll’s face.

I’m often curious about how a flower gets its name. Some are obvious, like the first two I featured above. This one is named for what it is not. So why “false”? The False Dayflower (Tinantia anomala) is a near twin of the true dayflowers in the genus Commelina — same grass-like leaves, same purplish, bilaterally symmetric bloom — so at a glance it passes for one of them. The giveaway is in the stamens. True dayflowers have three fertile stamens with smooth, hairless filaments, while the False Dayflower has six stamens whose filaments are densely bearded with fine hairs. Because it mimics the real thing but isn’t quite one, it earned the “false” label. One can’t help but wish it had been named for what it is rather than what it isn’t.

A Note on the Naturalists

Two of these flowers honor nineteenth-century naturalists. Drummond’s Rain Lily takes its name from Thomas Drummond (c. 1790–1835), a Scottish botanist who collected across Texas in 1833, gathering some 750 plant species and 150 bird specimens between Galveston Island and the Edwards Plateau before he died in Cuba in 1835. His work helped lay the foundation for later Texas botany. The Engelmann Daisy honors George Engelmann (1809–1884), a German-born physician and botanist based in St. Louis. Engelmann didn’t collect in Texas himself, but he described and cataloged many Texas plants sent to him by collectors such as Ferdinand Lindheimer, and his name is attached to numerous species of the region.

I enjoy this challenge a lot, and I already wonder what I’ll do when the letters K, Q, and Z come around. Even leaning on scientific names, I’m not sure I’ll have anything. Well, I suppose I have time to start hunting before those letters come up.

That is the story behind the shots. If you liked this post, you may also be interested in others featuring Drummond’s Rain Lily, Engelmann Daisy, False Dayflowers, FlowerHour, Texas, and Wildflowers. Until the next time, keep clicking and capturing the beauty your eyes find.

Posted for Terri’s Flower Hour #38.

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Sources:

• Native Plant Society of Texas — Zephyranthes drummondii (Prairie Lily / Rain Lily) — https://www.npsot.org/posts/native-plant/zephyranthes-drummondii/
• North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox — Zephyranthes drummondii — https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/zephyranthes-drummondii/
• Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center — Tinantia anomala (False Dayflower) — https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=TIAN
• Jim Conrad’s Backyard Nature — False Dayflower, Tinantia anomala — https://www.backyardnature.net/n/h/tinantia.htm
• Flora of North America — Tinantia anomala (flower measurements) — http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=242101911
• Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas — Drummond, Thomas — https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/drummond-thomas
• Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center — Engelmannia peristenia (Engelmann’s Daisy) — https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=enpe4