Flowers

Yesterday I spent an hour and a half at Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve on a spring afternoon full of wonderful things. I wrote the following at the Friends of Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve blog, and I hope you’ll go visit there. But meanwhile I have reproduced it below.

March 13, 2026 – Clear sky, breezy, and temperature in the mid-70s at 3:00pm.

I’m starting to think of spring as beginning when March arrives, as opposed to the more official date of March 20th. Trees are leafing out and flowers are popping up like the delightful crowpoison, which grows from a bulb and looks a little like wild onion but is not. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center says, “Some references list this species as poisonous to humans. The jury is still out about its toxicity to crows.” That part about toxicity to crows sounds a little tongue-in-cheek, but it makes for a fascinating name for the plant.

*A mournful thyris visiting a cluster of crowpoison flowers*

The flowers were visited by several small mournful thyris moths. These are black-and-white moths that fly during the day early in the year and reportedly just for a few weeks. It’s another species with a name that makes me want to find the story, but so far I have not found a reason for it to be mournful. Even its species name makes me curious (Pseudothyris sepulchralis, where “sepulchralis” seems to refer to a sepulchre, that is, a tomb carved in rock).

Meanwhile at the north pond, dragonflies were flying and turtles were basking in sunshine, including a pair of red-eared-sliders sharing a small branch of wood at the water’s surface. Those pond turtles are active even on warmer winter days, but spring sunshine makes them seem very content – though that is a perception from a human point of view that could be completely off-base.

I tried to capture the overall look of the woodland in a photo that, seen on a phone’s little screen, is probably very plain. But the crowns of trees are covered in a sort of mist of pale green, the budding of new leaves and the catkins of the oaks. I checked to be sure of the details because I’m not a botanist or even a knowledgeable plant person, but catkins are the dangling strings of the male flowers of oaks. They will be releasing the yellow pollen that coats your windshields, sidewalks, and noses in the coming weeks. And with any luck, they find their way to the female flowers on the oak trees, which are much less conspicuous.

*New blackjack leaves – notice the spines at the end of each leaf lobe*

The other thing that always seems wonderful to me is how the blackjack oak leaves come in as little red leaves, then turn such a wonderful deep green later on, and next autumn may once again be red – or yellow or some combination – before dropping to the ground.

*Blunt woodsia growing in a protected spot along with some moss*

Along the north side of the woodland, where it meets the patch of prairie, there are shaded spots and little embankments where the land moves up toward the top of the hill. In one of those shaded places I saw a fern that you can find around the hillside and up toward the bluff. It is the blunt woodsia, also called by a couple of other common names like blunt-lobed woodsia. Finding these little ferns, or the various mosses or even liverworts, brings you to a different perspective, like looking at tiny worlds existing in the shaded places in the preserve where moisture is not too scarce.

*The grand old post oak designated as the Caddo oak, after the Caddo people who once lived in the area*

I walked by the Caddo oak, a huge post oak designated as a historic tree by the Texas Historic Tree Coalition, and its crown is speckled with new green leaves, just as it has done every year for roughly 200 years.

Nearby, I watched a medium to large bird sail through trees and across a part of the north prairie, disappearing into understory and trees to the west. I immediately thought of the northern harrier, a graceful hawk that tends to hunt on the wing, flying low and listening for rodent movement. This bird had the right shape and the kind of flight I would expect with a harrier, and I saw that this brownish bird had some white markings but I could not spot the white band that should go across the base of the tail. So I just don’t know. I noticed that Brent Franklin saw one here at the preserve in 2018, which helps make it plausible, but of course doesn’t confirm my observation today.

Walking around the blue loop, I saw a couple of mourning doves near the boulder trail. They were behind a sort of thicket and did not seem perturbed by me and my camera about twenty feet away. They were probably foraging for seeds along the ground.

*Texas spiny lizard, watching me carefully*

On the way down the south-facing hill, glint of reflected sunlight caught my eye. It turned out to be reflected off the back of a male Texas spiny lizard clinging to a small tree trunk. He eyed me in that way that these common lizards do, making his best guess about whether to remain motionless and hopefully unseen, or quickly scurry around to the other side of the trunk. After I took a photo as I moved around him slowly and hoped not to scare him, he quickly scooted around the trunk and out of sight.

It was certainly a walk full of wonderful things today. Everywhere I went there was butterfly and moth activity, either more of the mournful thyris moths or else goatweed leafwings, sulphurs, or a swallowtail or two. And the southern dewberries are blooming with those beautiful white flowers.

*Southern dewberry, which will feed birds and other wildlife later in the year*

I have been walking a lot at Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve lately, and maybe it is still winter, but everything that is alive seems to know that it is spring. Some count the beginning of spring according to months, starting with March. Others mark the start of spring when the length of days and nights becomes equal (the “vernal equinox,” March 19^th). For wild things that grow and breathe, spring is about temperatures and the length of daylight, and it is also about everything else around them. Spring is a team effort, so that new plant growth and flowering, the awakening of insects, the migration of birds, and lots of other things need to happen together for everything to work right.

*A sulphur, probably the clouded sulphur*

In the middle of the day on February 20^th at the preserve, it was 81.1F in the shade, and insects were on the move, including grasshoppers, wasps, and butterflies. As I walked down the trail, a small sulphur butterfly flew ahead of me to a new place to land among the emerging green plants. It found another sulphur and together they rose, circling each other, and flew away above the treetops. Along the boulder trail I could see six or eight of them at any one time. One would encounter another and they would briefly chase each other in a twirling pattern before separating.

*The white flowers of crowpoison, also called “false garlic.” It may be toxic to people, and maybe to crows as well?*

On the 26^th at midday it was 92.8F in the shade near the north pond, and I heard a few cricket frogs calling for the first time in months. Turtles basked in the sun. High above me, altocumulus clouds were arranged like balls of cotton in a patch of sky. Birds called from nearby trees – Carolina wrens, northern cardinals, Carolina chickadees, and a white-throated sparrow. Further along the trail was a spot with scattered white flowers of crowpoison and the yellow blooms of a plant called golden corydalis. Sometimes people call it “scrambled eggs.”

*Golden Corydalis, sometimes called “scrambled eggs”*

And then March arrived, and suddenly the plum trees were covered in clusters of white flowers. From a distance, other tree branches mostly looked gray and bare, but here and there you could see a slight green haze of budding leaves. Elbowbush was flowering. On the way to the north pond, when I looked closely I could see that most of the trees and shrubs were budding.

*Clustered flowers on a plum tree at the preserve*

On March the 2^nd according to the calendar it could barely be spring, could it? I sat in my back yard and made a few notes:

Here in this false spring, the tree blossoms are bright white. The winter sun, still low in the sky, makes the day look like perpetual morning. The sun-warmed air moves and is a soft breeze against the skin. It is the morning of the year, the beginning. The flowers and bees know it, and the birds announce it in the trees. What does the chickadee and the cardinal know that the calendar does not?

I sit and look at the sky, the blue canvas where wind, sun, and water scribble and paint. There are dabs, streaks, and lines, white images and symbols in a language familiar but still a bit mysterious. Thin brush strokes make a big heart with a few lines of text, maybe wishing us peace and well being. And then the wind moves it to the east and the canvas is cleared.

In my yard, when I looked down, I found a forest of little blue flowers among leaves of various shapes. In the midst of this two- to four-inch “forest,” the yellow sun of a dandelion shone. A honeybee visited the flower; dandelions are among the first flowers to feed the hive.

The ground was filled with such a beautiful jumble of green shapes. There were bigger, taller ones with leaves like umbrellas with notches and fingers. The appeared to be clusters of about four frilly leaves right at the top of the stem. There was chickweed with long, branching stems and arrow-shaped leaves. Nearby were plants with delicate stems with leaflets off to each side, in the way we think of ferns.

Scattered among these was bird’s eye speedwell, a beautiful little flower that some say was considered a lucky charm, speeding travelers on their way. The flowers are white in the center and have four baby-blue lobes with tiny darker blue pinstripes. Another little plant is called “henbit deadnettle,” with tubular purple flowers. Some of these plants have amazing names, don’t they?

*Common chickweed in the center, with a four-lobed flower of field madder just to the right*

All these leaves and flowers made a tiny jungle inviting us to lie in their softness and explore smells and colors as if it was a tiny world all of its own, separate from streets and sidewalks and the things we normally notice.

And so, never mind the calendar – it is spring. Good morning! May the year treat us well.

Our Lives In Nature

How nature supports, informs, and inspires our lives

A Spring Journal Entry from Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve

The Morning of the Year