Scarlet Quince Ramblings

We were given a tip that the flowers in the Poteet area (south of San Antonio) are beautiful and different than what grows around here, so a couple of weeks ago we made the trip, and they certainly are.

Masses of Indian Paintbrush (toward the back; closer is pink phlox, white daisies, and yellow evening primroses).

Here’s a fringe of paintbrush in front, with phlox and white prickly poppy farther away.

More phlox and white prickly poppy.

Some places there was more of a mixture of flowers. This is (in front) Blue-Curls (Phacelia congesta), evening primrose (yellow), Indian Paintbrush (red-and-white), and phlox (pink); at the back the tall blue flowers are spiderwort (Tradescantia) and white prickly poppies. I didn’t make any effort to identify species for the most part, I just enjoyed the masses of flowers.

Pink evening primrose doesn’t have a smell you would notice in small quantities, but millions together have a distinct odor (and I can’t call it a fragrance).

This purple prickly poppy (Argemone sanguinea) is worth a closer look. I’ve never seen it before. It only grows in south Texas.

And more paintbrush. We drove in a loop from Pleasanton to Poteet to various county roads, back to Poteet (a move engineered by yours truly — the Poteet Strawberry Festival was going on and we stopped and got some shortcake) then on to Jourdanton and back. There were no bluebonnets in this area at all — they stopped a little ways south of San Antonio.

A few days later we drove the Willow City Loop. Willow City is a nearly non-existent hamlet a few miles northeast of Fredericksburg, but there’s a loop of roads there that is famous for its bluebonnets.

There are hilltops where you can look down and see oceans of bluebonnets but it was a rainy day so they didn’t show up well from a distance.

I’ve never seen the white prickly poppy so lush. It reminded me of cotton fields (not that I’ve ever seen cotton fields).

Here’s a beautiful little iris called Celestials (Nemastylis geminaflora).

On the way back (we like to take FM 1323 to get to Willow City) we passed a donkey ranch. I love donkies so we stopped to look.

One of the donkies had a toy (it’s a donkey toy now; I couldn’t tell what ruined object it used to be) that another wanted very badly to get away from him. He would try to pull the thing out of the other’s mouth and when that didn’t work he’d bite him on the neck. It was so funny watching them play!