Travel Story--Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Austin, Texas

For me, who writes about plants and checks her accuracy in books and on websides, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center (website) has long been a resource I rely on, both the website (Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower data base) and books they have published. So to visit the actual center was a treat!

flower bed of evening primroses (Oenothera)

Founded by former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson and actress Helen Hays in  1982 as the National Wildflower Center, it grew, adding land and developing a strong public education function. In 1995 it was renamed the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. In 2006 it joined the University of Texas, so it is now the University of Texas Austin Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, a botanical garden focused on conservation of native plants. 

I've walked through a lot of botanical gardens in the last five years. Often they began as places to show new plants to local people, so they grow lots of exotic species. Show-casing native species has only recently been added to the goals of botanical gardens, because at one time, it was reasonable that local residents knew the local plants and the garden did not need to spend their resources growing such obvious plants. That has changed a lot; many people know only the yard and garden plants of neighborhoods and parks, very few of which are native. Botanical gardens are responding but Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center started 44 years ago and is a very impressive major resource on native plants.

They focus on native plants of Texas, a big diverse area. Today the website's goals speak of conservation generally, not just within Texas, but the gardens are overwhelmingly native Texas plants. I reveled in it. American native plants rarely get such an impressive showing. 

Many plants that gardens grow have both Eurasian and American species, for example columbines (Aquilegia), peonies (Paeonia), and magnolias (Magnolia), so botanical garden beds full of lovely flowers are as often non native as native. At Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, I did not need to check "is that the one from China?" 

The collection was amazing. Early April is probably mid-spring; there were plants in flower that were just starting to grow back home in Colorado. I have no idea how different the place will be in July.

I saw plants native only to Texas, such as this water clover  Marsilea macropoda, a fern, not a clover (water fern family, Marsileaceae).

Other plants growing there have a native range that extends west or south of Texas.  For example, the California poppy, Eschscholzia californica can be found in Texas and northern Mexico. The sign on this bed of poppies proudly announced they are a distinct desert subspecies, the Mexican gold poppy, Eschscholzia californica var. mexicana, native to Texas. (Poppy family, Papaveraceae)

Mexican gold poppy, Eschscholzia california var. mexicana

Still other plants were from the eastern U.S. The pretty red berries (below) are on coralberry, Symphoricarpos orbiculatus (honeysuckle family, Caprifoliaceae) a shrub of eastern North America which reaches its southwestern limit in Texas. 

coralberry, Symphoricarpos orbiculatus

This pretty purple flower is in the vervain family, Verbenaceae. Not long ago its scientific name was Verbena, but now it is Glandularia (Glandularia bipinnata). On the whole, glandularias are verbenas with flowers in a cluster, leaving the ones with flowers in a spike in the genus Verbena. I had been reading about them and was delighted to see them. The common name for this one remains prairie verbena, though you can also call it Dakota mock verbena. 

prairie verbena, Dakota mock verbena, Glandularia bipinnata

Plant after plant. Natives. I knew many of them from walking prairies in Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado. It was great to see them. But, Texas is big and diverse and the garden had lots of species I had only read about. 

Antelope horns or antelope horn milkweed (Asclepias asperula) is a common Texas milkweed recommended as monarch butterfly food that I hadn't seen before.

Antelope horns or antelope horn milkweed (Asclepias asperula)

Of course they had Texas bluebonnets (any of 5 or 6 species of Lupinus, the Texas state flower). You can see the pea-like seed pods. All but one of those species of bluebonnets are annuals so the seeds are necessary for next year's bluebonnets.

Texas bluebonnets, Lupinus species, probably Lupinus texensis

A mass of black-eye Susans (Rudbeckia species)

black-eyed Susans, Rudbeckia

Here are some other plants I admired. Somehow, when somebody says "I want to grow natives" I imagine little nondescript plants with greenish flowers. So these pictures are to counter that mental image I keep dredging up:

I didn't include captions above, in order to emphasize the photos. Respectively they are 1) blanket flower, Gaillardia pulchella; 2) cedar sage, Salvia roemeriana; 3) cenizo, Leucophyllum fructescens; 4) evening primrose probably fluttermill, Missouri evening primrose, Oenothera macrocarpa and scarlet pea, Indigofera miniata; 5) a globe mallow, Sphaeralcea probably Sphaeralcea hastulata; and 6) Canada columbine, Aquilegia canadensis.

[I generally try to give information about plants, arguing they are more than just a name. So here is that for the list above. 1) blanket flowers have native moths (Schinia species) that are red and yellow. They seem very bright, but they are camouflaged sitting on a blanket flower flower; 2) cedar sage grows in the deep shade cedar (Juniperus) groves in western Texas, hence the name. It doesn't smell like cedar; 3) cenizo is also called Texas barometer bush because it goes from not flowering to full bloom very quickly in high humidity or after rain, appearing to predict the rain; 4) Missouri evening primrose has a broad range across the central U.S. The flowers open in the evening, close as the morning warms and are pollinated by moths, especially hawk moths. Scarlet pea is a low-growing legume of the grasslands. It is in the same genus, Indigofera, as the plants that are the sources of indigo dye and will produce indigo dye, though less concentrated than domesticated species; 5) globemallows are a group of 40-60 species of the U.S. southwest, in fact none grow east of Texas. Sphaeralcea hastulata is native only to Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. 6) Canada columbine in Texas? yes, this plant has a marvelous distribution all across the forests of the eastern United States. Hummingbirds love it. ]

I scarcely looked up, gave the owl at the gate barely a glance, and paid little attention to the guides telling me about how the Center conserves water...the plants were that cool. It was a lovely place to ramble.

It was a wonderful look at--celebration of--American native plants. 

Comments and corrections welcome. 

References

DeLong-Amaya, A. 2025. The Texas Native Plant Primer. Timber Press. Portland, OR. 

Kathy Keeler, A Wandering Botanist
More at awanderingbotanist.com
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Please take a look at my books. For those who don't read the internet or prefer books I gathered posts together into actual books, for example:

NoCo Notables, Stories of Common Plants of the Colorado Front Range, Plants have cool stories, about their interactions with other plants and animals and with humans. Go beyond just having a name for the plant, learn more about it. Available from Amazon link or from me. 

And

Look Twice, containing stories of plants from western Nebraska and eastern Colorado, available from Amazon  link or from me. 

New book coming this summer: Plants You Meet Everywhere. The stories of really cosmopolitan plants such as plantains, marigolds and bougainvillea.