Yucca

While the name may sound... offputting. Apparently many varieties of Yucca have edible parts to them that are beneficial to the body.
This particular kind (99.998% positive) is a Pallida Yucca, or Pale Yucca.
To put things oversimply Pale Yucca looks like an overgrown clump of stiff grass. To go into more detail it's a cluster of evergreen leaves that are between 5-20 inches each that radiate like a rosette not like a bloomin' onion shape. The leaves start small and end in a sharpSHARP* point, but can be up to 1.5 inches wide in the middle; they're flat but can curl slightly inward from the yellow/brown spine (it's not called a midvein on a Yucca plant). They have green leaves with yellow edges but they're coated in a light minty-green film that can be easily rubbed off. Unlike many other Yucca this kind does not have little fibers coming from the edge of the leaves.
The bell shaped flowers grow on a stalk, much like a skinny tree trunk, and are about 2-3 inches ranging in color from light green to offwhite. Each Pale Yucca can have up to 100 (sometimes more) flowers on it's stalk. The stalks themselves can reach 6 feet.
The important part is that it's a Yucca plant, and even if you don't know exactly which kind as long as you have the general idea you'll be able to identify a Yucca plant. Joshua trees are Yuccas also, but they look like feathered tree trunks with Yucca plants growing on them so I guess they're not too hard if you know what you're looking for.


*Word to the wise, I've heard of people's skin being easily punctured by the point of the Yucca leaf; and, actually, I've heard the edges aren't very pleasant either.

Silverleaf Nightshade

This is another mailbox find. It was such a pretty little flower, but it is a very poisonous plant like most nightshade (aka, potato). The whole plant was about fairly short, with flowers about an inch in diameter with five light lavender petals and five bright yellow stamen. When fresh the flower looks like a five-pointed star, when slightly old it looks like... a starved five-pointed star. This type of nightshade can be anywhere from 4 inches to 3 feet tall.
I found it right at the end of this batch's flowering time, they flower from about April to August (colder climates) or October (for warmer climates).
The stems are slightly fuzzy looking though when they start dying the fuzz drops off leaving the plant looking much more green, this fuzz is what gives the plant it's silvery look. The leaves are generally between 3-5 inches long and are elongated (.25-1 inch wide) with slightly rounded points, they're frequently curled upwards from the midvein and appear to have wavy edges; they also grow in opposite steps.
Silverleaf Nightshade produces small light yellow to red berries, which are no-nos to eat.


For a picture of many in bloom:

Whatsit called... Dust Devil

When there's a whirl of wind that lasts only seconds and then is gone, you know the ones that look like things whirling in a glass cylinder.
One "sprouted" around me, A, and the stroller and nearly spun the stroller out of my hands and onto its side. I also have to clean the stroller because it the wind deposited a good cup or more worth of crushed leaves and dirt into it.
I just can't find the name for it.

I have been given the answer.
They are Dust Devils, and the one I experienced was a small one though they can get very large.

Brunner's Mantis

This one was particularly difficult to identify, and I admit to soliciting the opinion of the wonderfully helpful people at What's That Bug?
It looked like a walkingstick: long and skinny with long and skinny legs.
It looked like a mantis: serrated sides and thicker front legs.

I searched everywhere through both walkingstick and mantis directories, and could not find it.
The Brunner's Mantis is also known by the name, get this, The Walkingstick Mantis, due to it's uncanny resemblance to walkingsticks.

These things are big, the body itself was about 6 inches long and that didn't include it's 1.5 inch long antenna. They are vibrant green, with light antenna and what look to be short antenna sticking out the back end. They also have the Mantis' half triangular half hammer-esque head.
It's two back pairs of legs are very close together (both are also very close to the center of the bug) and at first glance look like they only have one joint to them; their "feet" are very small. From the middle legs to the front legs the sides of the body are finely serrated like a baby steak knife. The front pair of legs have the obviously Mantis backward bending first joint and have the little hairs on the second section of leg.

The weirdest thing about Brunner's Mantis is they've never found a male, never ever ever. Under observation these are born female, lay eggs, and those eggs hatch into females. They can do this without ever touching another of it's species.
They call it "Thelytoky Parthenogenesis," or to put it in easier terms it's a form of asexual reproduction. They're not hermaphroditic, they're just all female. It's fairly rare, but not unheard of.

So, I've found a big, ugly, weird bug!

Mud Dauber

This guy was sitting on the bush outside my window. I knew I'd seen one before and was almost positive it was fairly harmless.
It is a Black and Yellow Mud Dauber, so named because they make their nests out of mud. They are technically wasps, but are more related to bees than to vespid wasps (the typical black and yellow wasp). They can be found from Canada to Central America, and they don't sting unless highly provoked - they don't even really defend their nests.
You can frequently find them on plants as the adult Mud Dauber feeds on nectar, but sometimes you see them carrying spiders and that is the food for their larva. They are great spider killers and this particular kind is very fond of jumping and orb spiders. Their cousins the Blue Mud Dauber is a primary predator of Black Widows, so go mud daubers!
The Black and Yellow is usually around an inch long and primarily black with a splotch of yellow on the back of the thorax and mostly yellow front two sets of legs (with some yellow here and there varying by creature). It has three pairs of legs with the back pair being very long. They also have one pair of amber wings that that cross one on top of the other above the abdomen. The most notable thing about a Black and Yellow Mud Dauber is it's long thread-like waist, it's about a 1/4 to a 1/3 of the entire body length!

The waist is a definite give away for this mostly harmless wasp.

It's a WHAT Oak?

This should have been the easiest thing to identify. It's a tree right in my front yard with the tag from the nursery on it still.
The tag read, "Oak, Live."
Well, duh, who in their right minds would buy a DEAD tree from a nursery. So I promptly forgot about it until about a week later I was reading through a paper and found that someone was given a "Live Oak" as a prize and how wonderful they were.
Oh, so that's a type of oak along with white and red. It doesn't help that the leaves aren't normal oak shaped.
Live Oak (or Evergreen Oak) is actually a broad term for several sections in the genus Quercus.* It gets the name "Evergreen" and "Live" from the fact that even in the Winter it stays green and alive looking whereas other Oaks are bare and dead looking. The leaves drop and regrow in the course of a couple of weeks in early spring.

Live Oak isn't just one species or subspecies, it's multiple genuses; this is making it a booger to pin down what it is. It could be a Southern or Texas Live Oak or five or six or more others. So I made a decision to not completely identify it, to not pin it down. I'm going broad spectrum here!

The bark of Live Oak is very pale brown and is vertically furrowed except for the big furrowed areas which look a lot like broken asphalt. The leaves are a bright deep green, and are thin oval shaped (when young) and mostly oval with the suggestion of horns (when grown). Like other oaks the leaves appear to grow in sets of five (now I feel like doing a little song and dance number about how nature comes in Fibonacci).
The young Live Oak is taller than it's wide, but the mature Live Oak is very distinctive in that it's frequently as wide (or wider) than it is tall. If you've ever seen a movie set in the south that has a tree that has truck-sized HUGE low horizontal branches that sweep upward after a while... that's a Live Oak.


*Yes, a lot of this information you can get on Wikipedia. In fact that where I've been starting for these last posts, but just like with research papers I use it as a good place to find more solid online sources.
Live Oak Information and Pictures

Familiar Bluet Damselfly

I first saw this at the pool, it kept hovering over the water so I got to look for about five minutes, that is until A decided that something so shiny belonged in her hand.

The Familiar Bluet Damselfly is so named because it is found in most of the US and due to the fact that it has much more blue than other Damselflies. They interbreed with Tule Bluets, so it's lucky I happened to see a male because apparently the female Tules and Familiars look almost indistinguishable.
The Familiar Bluet has large spherical compound eyes that are blue on the bottom half and black on the top half. The thorax is mostly blue with a couple black lines on the top (as far as I can tell from all the pictures, no stripes on the bottom of the thorax). It's long, skinny, ten-sectioned, abdomen is, also, mostly blue with thin black rings around the joints. They normally are about an inch and a half long.
Being a Damselfly the forewings and hindwings are the same size and shape and when at rest the wings lay flat against the sides of the body (and look like they only have one set of wings). And their legs look like butterfly legs, six kinda fuzzy looking things.

The Tule Bluet though looks almost the same except that their abdomens are more likely to be one section blue, then one black, then one blue, etc.

Turkey Vulture

In flight they are beautiful, up close they look like someone plucked their heads clean and forgot to iron their skin.
This was an easy one to identify and should be for anyone who knows what they're looking for. Just think about it, how many big black birds with red heads and legs are there?
It's wingspan is between 5 1/2 and 6 feet, head to tail it's upwards to 32 inches, and the vultures can weigh up to 5 pounds. They also have distinctive hooked white beaks. They don't make noise other than grunts and hisses, so if you think you've got it pegged as a Turkey Vulture and it makes a birdy noise, unfortunately, you got it wrongly identified.

Turkey vultures are very common and can be found from southern Canada to the very tip of Chile. Due to the fact that they have this wide living range and the fact that they do migrate these birds are under the Migratory Bird Protection Act just like Canadian Geese and Blackcapped Chickadees. Most of their US territory is migratory, summer, territory, but they live in Texas all year round.

This bird is as easy to identify as a Red Tail Hawk. Remember: big, dark, red head.

Texas Rat Snake

Imagine my horror and fear as I went to get my mail and saw a snake nearby the mailbox. I'm talking about 20 feet, but still, a wild snake 20 feet away is WAY too close for me.
I thought it had been run over by a car because it was at the edge of the road and it wasn't moving. My terror that it could be dangerous kept me from getting closer, so I looked and looked and burned it into my memory as best I could.
When I got back I told N I saw a big honking snake that was "this big" 16-20 inches with spots on it's back. He said, "Oh, that sounds like a Diamondback Rattlesnake." I freaked out and spent a good deal of time looking up snake pictures on the internet to find out that it wasn't a rattler at all, I thought it was a King Snake. I put aside the thought until now and looked some more to find lo-and-behold it appeared to be a juvenile Texas Rat Snake.

I thank my lucky stars for three things.
1) They are not venomous!
2) It was not moving!
3) It wasn't full grown!

Full grown rat snakes are generally between 42 and 72 inches and are about a foot long when hatched. They are tan/brown snakes, when young, that have darker spots down their back roughly in the shape of a tanned hide (I've also seen the term "saddle") with smaller spots of the same color going down the sides. These spots generally fade with age and the snakes themselves can appear anywhere on the spectrum from brown to yellow.
They're heads are grayer than the rest of their bodies (usually with a arrow shaped marking on them) and appear slightly wider than their body. That's just something I read, I didn't get close enough to be able to tell.
When it shakes its tail it can sound almost like a rattlesnake, even though they have no rattles. While these are highly aggressive snakes they can't really break the skin when they bite and are constrictors by nature. They are prized for being good at what they do, eating and killing rodents. They are great climbers and will go up trees and into attics in search of prey.
They live primarily in Texas and can be found pretty much anywhere that happens to have bountiful munchies.

Bermuda Grass

I'm used to grass being soft, lush, straight, and green (unless it's August).
This stuff is called Bermuda Grass, it's a non-native grass - not native to Bermuda either - that is very invasive. It thrives even during drought and extreme heats. It flourishes in the sun which creates bare spots under the trees that actually are big enough to give proper shade.

This particular sprig on the right is only 3/4 of an inch long. It's unmistakable in the way its leaves are so compact together. The stems are slightly flattened, almost imperceptibly in a sample this small, and can be tinged with a little purple. The drier the grass is the browner it becomes and the purple is the first bit of color to go, so if you think it's Bermuda Grass but there is no purple tinge don't worry it took me 10 minutes to find any color other than green in my dry grass.

It can normally grow up to a foot tall (not exceeding three), but primarily spreads through creepers that root in. This creates a mat of grass.

Guide books won't tell you this, but when it's dry Bermuda Grass can break apart and stick to your clothes much like burrs (but in a pin shape).

[edit] Also the two things that pop into my mind when looking at a yard of Bermuda grass are "split ends" and "ferny." If that helps you identify, great, it certainly helps me!

What the Texas Wild Things Are

Being a native Northerner I spent considerable time and effort learning the wildlife up there, what was safe and what was not. I knew most of the roadside flowers and a lot of trees. Being transplanted into the South makes me lost. I know enough to know don't eat berries and don't bother animals with stingers, but even everyday normal things like grass is different. So with my trusty rusty camera at my side and a field guide in hand (though for now the internet as I don't have a field guide yet), I hope to learn what I can about this great, hot, state's flora and fauna.


I will be sharing what I can so y'all can see what I see.