Mushroom Madness

I think these may be poisonous, but it could be another two species that are very tasty. I really need to remember to take wet wipes or gloves with me because I haven't been picking things for fear of walking around for another hour before I get home with poisonous somethings on my hands.
That may sound mega-paranoid, but there are plants out there that are super-deadly-poisonous that you don't want to mess with. That's why it's so important to identify your surroundings and know what's safe. I've come to the conclusion that I'll pick most things, but mushrooms are not only hard to identify but are frequently poisonous.
Mushroom hunting is a hobby that requires lots of studying, asking for help, and caution. The only reason I'm attempting here is because I literally saw nearly a thousand of these mushrooms on a mere 45 minute walk. The biggest things I did wrong in trying to identify was 1) not kicking it over to check the gills and stem and 2) not squishing it to see how it bruised.
Looking at the top it reminds me of popcorn with the little pieces of shell clinging to the puffed white exterior. They were all between 3-6 inches in diameter with short stems and they did not grow in fairy rings. Those last two things make it unlikely to be the poisonous type that looks like this as they have long stems and grow in fairy rings. I still wouldn't eat them though, partially because by the time I found that out they were all long dead.
Since they were all over the place I'm hoping the next rain brings them out again so I can identify them better.

It could be a False Parasol (the poisonous one) or chlorophyllum molybdites, but it could possibly be a Shaggy Parasol chlorophyllum rhacodes or brunneum or the Parasol Mushroom macrolepiota procera. The sad thing, I probably would have been able to almost give a positive identification had I checked the gills and spore print. The poisonous one has green spores and slightly green gills and the edible mushrooms are white.

Just remember, not all fairy ring mushrooms are edible. I used to think they were, but they aren't.

Bald Cypress

I found this lovely "little" specimen right by a pond, but some the nearby trees of the same kind were actually half in the water.
The Bald Cypresses are one of the few deciduous conifers in the USA and this grows in a path from Texas, through Florida, up to Virginia. They lose their leaves in the Winter and grow them back very quickly.
The Montezuma Cypress is very similar to the Bald Cypress but does not produce "knees" much (occasionally but not often or many). The "knees" tell all. This particular tree doesn't have many knees, but the one next to it did. Cypress Knees are when the roots grow up out of the ground and go straight back down, this can either look like wooden spikes or just a bunch of rounded knobs surrounding the trunk. The leaves are reminiscent of pine, but lay flat in opposite pairs along a thin branchlet. The branchlets shoot off down the stem in a spiraling fashion. The leaves are flat, light green, pointed, and 1/2 - 3/4 of an inch long. The branchlets are 2-4 inches long. That's another difference with the Montezuma, it's branchlets get up to 6 inches long.
This might give you a slightly better idea of size of the leaves. Those right there in the middle are cones. Yep, they're round. Yep, they look like battered green golf balls. They are about an inch in diameter and may have a slightly waxy look to them. It's important to remember that these cones turn grey-green, not brown like most other conifer tree's cones.
There are both male and female flowers the male flowers are up to 4 inches long (female flowers are shorter); they are green hanging cords with a whole bunch of little buds off the sides.
The bark as you can see is reddish-greyish and quite flaky looking. The trunk is rough with deep ridges, but the branches are more like scaly paper.
It's a beautiful tree and gives great shade, but not so great for climbing. Maybe I'll find some good climbing trees eventually, but all the ones with supportive branches would need a ladder to get to.

Gay-Feather

I love using books to identify plants and animals.
I found this beautiful road-side flower - it's purple, which is one of my favorite flower colors (I also like orange, but not together in bouquets), with fine messy petals. It took less than five minutes to scan a 250 page wildflower book and verify online. Granted, sometimes the books don't help, but most of the time they do and most of the time it's quick. I do have to say one thing in favor of online plant identification: you'll find more information than you need, you may even learn to identify a species you haven't even encountered yet. Now that that is out of the way... onto the plant.

Blazing Stars, or Gay-Feathers as they are also known, grow pretty much everywhere in the US that lies to the East of the Rockies. There are different variants and species, but most of them look similar enough that it's easy enough to figure out once you've seen one. Sometimes the flowers look more separate poofs, sometimes you can see the petals, and sometimes you can't.
This particular one you can barely see the petals for the (don't know what they actually are) purple tentacles coming out of the flowers. They grow in a 1-4 foot spike and the flowers bloom from the top down. The flowers are 1/2 - 3/4 of an inch and the thin leaves poking out the sides are up to 3 inches long.
They usually bloom late Spring through Late Summer, but since this is Texas heat and a Texan plant and apparently they can bloom here until early December.

Pecan Tree

The funniest thing about this type of tree was that I first picked a pecan out of what I thought was a Persimmon. The pecan branch was sticking in with the Persimmon so what when I reached in to get a fruit, I got a nut* instead.
I couldn't even see the pecan tree the persimmon was so thick, so I was just sitting there trying to figure out what purpose it served to the persimmon. I could say I'm smart enough to not tell people about my silly ideas, but I thought that picture of utter confusing might prove amusing.

The Pecan is the state tree of Texas. Now what better reason could there be to know how to identify it?

This is the first tree I've tried to identify that has compound leaves. The leaves themselves are alternate, growing 12-20 inches long and having between 9-17 leaflets. The leaflets are between 2-5 inches long and 1-2.5 inches wide. The pecan always has one leaflet on the end of the rachis** and the rest grow in pairs, so it will always have an odd number of leaflets. The leaflets are lightly toothed (almost like the edge of a ripped newspaper), and shaped like a spear head with the tips being slightly curved.

Pecans are large trees, generally between 60-130 feet tall, and this one was doing it's best towering over most of the other trees in the area.

In the Spring they get "catkins" which are the flowers and look like green dreadlocks - they are up to 7 inches long. Later they get the nuts which have a thick protective case around them. They are egg shaped with four ridges running vertically, they start out green but turn brown. When the nut is ripe for eating the case with peel back into quarters and you can pluck the pecan out.

The bark is crinkly, wrinkly, and ridged but not very deeply. It's a grey-brown, but other than that I really don't know how to describe it.

*Factoid! Pecans are part of the Hickory family are do not have true nuts. They are actually similar to peaches and plums, aka: drupes.
**I had to look that one up, it's the main stem of the compound leaf. All the leaflets branch off this main stem.

Whatsit called... Twinkle

I stood out during the nighttime for the first time. I'd been outside all right, but not for long - never long enough for my eyes to adjust enough to really see the stars.
I found Jupiter easily, but had to pull out a compass to find the Little Dipper as half of its stars weren't visible and I only had a vague idea which way North was (that drives me nuts, not knowing North).
The weirdest thing was the twinkling. There is some real twinkle, twinkle little star going on here. I know that the earth's atmosphere causes the winking out which we call "twinkling" but I never quite noticed it like this in the North.
Quite honestly I had a disconcerting moment once my eyes adjusted because my first thought was, "Those can't all be satellites." The whole sky kept blinking and winking and twinkling at me; once I got used to it I thought it was cool, but things that are that different are definitely weird at first.

Extra Special Find

If you live in Texas and the Southwest and love to try new things and finding uses for wild plants... this book is just for you.
I found it in the library and it's awesome! There's in depth ways to find the right wild plants and fruits, it even has recipes in it. I really want to try making sauted tumbleweed roots with bacon or persimmon jam.
Maybe it's just me, but I think anyone interested in the outdoors would like this book.

Edible and Useful Plants of Texas and the Southwest by Delena Tull. First printed in 1987, this printing in 1999

A note: It also has a section on identifying poisonous plants and fruits as well.

Crow-Poison

True to it's name Crow-Poison, or False Garlic, is poisonous if ingested. Every bit of it is poisonous, you can not eat any part of the plant... leaves, roots, flowers, stems, nothing. This makes me glad this wilted and died before I could get it home because many of my unattended samples have been partially eaten. As an aside, samples I know have poisonous elements, like a cutting from a bush with white berries (I don't know what it is, but I can't think of any non-poisonous white berry), goes into a closed box.
This is a Southern plant; the farthest North it goes is Southern Illinois, but it's all over the Dixieland.
I learned a new word while looking up this lovely little plant: tepal. "Tepal" is actually the general term for all outer parts of the flower, but is usually used when the petals and sepals are indistinguishable. Crow-Poison is one such plant and the Rainlilies I covered recently also have tepals (Tulips as well).

Crow-Poison has six white tepals with a thin purple or brown stripe on the backs of each one. It has six stamen surrounding one pistil, all of them have yellow-green bottoms, white middles, and yellow tops. The 1 inch diameter flowers grow in bunches off the top of one 6-16 inch stem. The leaves are on the very bottom and grow almost as long as the stems and are only about 1/8 of an inch diameter (they're round as well). These flowers frequently grow in large patches covering yards and fields, but can be found alone. If you're looking to find these they actually flower both in the Spring and in the Fall, so you don't actually have to wait all year for them to turn up again.
They grow from bulbs, like onions or tulips. Actually they look a lot like wild onions except the flowers are bigger and there aren't as many on each stem (generally no more than 8 flowers on one stem). Since onions are okay to eat and these are not you need to remember Crow-Poison does not have any hint of a garlicy-oniony smell, they don't have much of any smell.

Despite it being a weed and poisonous, it's a pretty flower and a really awesome name.

Common Paper Wasp

This brown and yellow wasp is the Common Paper Wasp. It's the exclamans one as the Austrailians call their humilis "Common" as well.
Full grown these are between 3/4 and 1 inch long are are thin wasps (being no more than 1/4 inch wide/thick). They have red-brown spots on every joint of the abdomen and a red-brown, elongated, pentagon on their thorax pointing towards their head. That pentagon (which is the same shape as Superman's super-logo) is an easy give-away, not to mention it's brown instead of black like most yellow and [blank] wasps.
Their wings are long and brown, and their antenna are black with red tips. Their legs are multicolored as well. They have large, brown, compound eyes and triangular heads.

Being paper wasps they have the paper celled nest. The nests point downward and are made up of hexagonal cells that are sometimes covered, and sometimes not. You can usually find these under eves, by doors, pretty much any relatively protected area though you'll probably find them most frequently on buildings.
They are fairly non-aggressive wasps, so if the nest is out of the reach of children you don't have remove it. I read reports of people being inches away from the nest and the wasps still not caring. The Common Paper Wasps are great for gardens, they feed on all those nasty bugs that eat the gardens and give them to their larvae as well. So unless they are posing a danger by being too near a door or if there are overly curious children, it's best to leave them be.

Smilax Bona-Nox

I told you I'd tell you what that thorny vine was, but that scientific name isn't helpful at all I'm guessing.
It's a brier, particularly a Saw (or Cat) Greenbrier. You might have guessed the brier part just by looking at the picture with the dense curtain of old briers making a thorny, nigh impassable, fence. The stems of this vine are tough and wiry with a smattering of spines that look like rose thorns. The leaves vary between heart shaped and triangular and it's 3-5 veins curve to fit the shape of the leaf. While it is not always the case this Greenbrier frequently has white or light green splotches on the leaves. They're about 2-5 inches long and 1-4 inches wide.
The flowers show in Spring they are clumped together and are green with curled back petals. The fruit ripens in fall and are dark purple, they look a lot like grapes - like 1/4 inch diameter grapes.
While other briers may have edible bits, I can find no such information on this particular kind. So the safety mantra goes, "don't eat it!"

Carolina Snailseed

This shiny vine with it's bright orange-red berry clusters is a Carolina Snailseed, aka: Carolina Moonseed, Coralbeads, and Redberry Moonseed (doesn't that sound like a hippie name?). There are lots of things you can notice or use to identify this plant, but if you see a plant and you think it's a Snailseed here's what you do. Pick a berry, careful though, they are poisonous but I just don't know how much so I wouldn't recommend getting juice on your fingers if you can't wash it off; then stomp on it. I say stomp because you want to obliterate the berry leaving just the seed behind. The seed is very distinctive - it looks like a snail (or a while caterpillar curled around a tiny plate). The seeds are a 1/4 inch at the max. Unfortunately the fruit is only available right around now, the September-November time.
The rest of the plant is very hardy, it's a Southern plant so it can a lot of heat and it's drought resistant as well. This vine just grows up and up and up; I've seen it 20+ feet up in trees. Just so you know this does not have thorns, the vines are smooth and round, the thorns are on a different vine (that's for me to know, and you to find out tomorrow).
The leaves are rich green (though not particularly dark), they are shiny above and dull and slightly fuzzy beneath, they're around 3 inches long. The bases of the leaves are flat, the whole thing is a rounded triangle shape. The veins are mostly straight, there may be some curve but not a lot.
The flowers appear between June and August, they're very non-ostentatious as they're a light green. The fruit then shows up as the same light green as the flowers, they're clustered a lot like a wild grape.

It's a pretty standered looking vine, what really sets it apart is the fruit and seeds.

American Elm

From the name I'm sure you can gather that these are not regional only trees, they're found all over the eastern half of the 48 states and even into Canada. I am already familiar with these trees. The funny thing is I've had a hard time believing that that's what they were at first because every specimen I've found has been so, well, short. They don't have a real problem with Dutch Elm Disease down here, so I guess they're just short. Undiseased Elms can grow up to 90 feet, but I haven't seen any over 40 and most of them are around 30 feet.

As you can see the leaves are simple, alternate, doubly serrated, ovular, pointy at the end, neat and even veins, and a base that is very uneven (one side starting a good 1/4 inch before the other). What you can't see is that the leaves are between 3-5 inches, very smooth on top but with raised veins on the back.
The seeds look like an itty-bitty, round, green, ravioli. They're 1/2 to 3/4 inches in diameter and flat with a little bumpy seed in the middle.
The bark is a dark grey with shallow, mostly vertical, crevices. Elm's have outer bark that is very easy to break off in places. If you do pull off a piece cleanly it'll be vaguely diamond or rectangular shaped. The twigs, though, have a slightly reddish tint to them.
According to the words of Wikipedia the flowers are small and purple-brown.

Even though I didn't have my camera with me, I knew enough about the tree to know it was perfectly safe to touch. I know that sounds silly, but from I hail from there be Poison Sumac... arrr.
(I don't want to change that, but I thought I should note that this was written on Talk Like a Pirate Day... I just had to delay posting for other, already written, posts)

I've been told there's also Cedar (or Texas) Elm around here, but their leaves are 3-5 centimeters instead of 3-5 inches.

Rabid Wolf Spider

Despite the name they are no more dangerous than normal wolf spiders. Oh, how lovely that is to know because you don't want to be bitten by any wolf spider. They won't kill you, but it's definitely painful and nasty. The good news is Wolf Spiders are non-aggressive, they will generally only bite under severe provocation.
The Rabid variety is nice and big; the bodies are an average of an inch long. When all stretched out it was a good 2.5-2.75 inches long. Wolf spiders have thick, long, non-hairy legs that get darker near the ends and smooth bodies. This particular one is female as you can see the egg sack she's carrying. Wolf spiders carry their egg sacks with them attached to their spinnerets, and the babies on the mother's abdomen (it looks like someone shredded cotton, mashed it back together and glued it to the back).
Rabids are distinctive in their patterns. Their cephalothoraxes (think "heads") are the same grey as their legs with two dark brown stripes on the top. Their abdomens are grey on the bottom topped with a dark brown stripe lined with yellow or light brown stripes. The yellow stripes have little feelers feeling into the dark brown.

They're normally found on the ground, or low down, as they hunt their prey without the use of a web.

Reading up on wolf spiders makes me think that's the kind I flipped out over my first week here as it charged right by my foot into the house. Never having seen a spider that big in the wild before I had a freak out and made N kill it for me.
I should've known better, I normally treat spiders so well, but it was such a Honey-I-Blew-Up-The-Spider type of thing to me I couldn't help myself and screamed like a little girl.

Whatsit called... mold

Something I've noticed is that despite not having mold (or mildew) in the apartment, my nose is happy for being blissfully free of them, food molds so quickly here.
Within 48 hours of the cornbread coming out of the oven it went bad. Homemade bread lasts barely 5 days. And hamburger buns from the store that are pumped full of preservatives and barely worth the name "food" don't even last 2 1/2 weeks when I'm used to them lasting 4 or 5.

Is it the heat? The way it gets humid quickly and then dries out again?

Little things like this won't be a problem now that I've realized it and can act accordingly. There are so many things, though, I wouldn't even think about when moving to a different area that I'm slowing learning about.

Oops: Painted Lady

This was an original post that turned out to be wrong. This butterfly was not in the Texas butterfly identification book I had, so I made an educated guess... a stab in the dark if you may. The only problem is I got it wrong.

See the Sunday, October 11th 2009 post for the correct identification, but here's a mildly altered post that describes the Painted Lady butterflies.

I'm pretty sure it's a type of Painted Lady butterfly. The only problem is that it has too many spots (aka eyes).
I know it's a butterfly. Two sets of wings usually held together when at rest, six legs, bright colors, and the easiest giveaway: antenna like a car - straight with bulbous ends.
A Painted Lady looks thus: the forewing tops are tipped with black with small white spots on it, pretty much the rest of the wings are orange except for the eyes. The top side of the wings have black spots where the eyes are, but on the bottom sides (which are visible when the wings are held together) have the eyes.
The "eyes" are blue dots surrounded by a thick ring of black surrounded by a thinner ring of orange surrounded by an even thinner ring of brown. The problem is depending on the type Painted Ladies have between 2-4 eyes, so while you may know generally you might not specifically. The rest of the bottom side of the wing is marbled in browns with white spots.
Painted Ladies have fuzzy bodies that are near to impossible to tell where the head, thorax, and abdomen end and begin. They also have those large, fishy looking eyes.

One helpful thing is that painted ladies are very bright, they've earned their name. They're not as common in Texas, though, since Texas is right at the edges of most of the variety's ranges.

Texas Bullnettle

I found this about two weeks ago when it had little buds on it, so I waited another week and snapped a picture with open flowers. At first I thought it looked like a wild melon or squash plant, just the way the plant spread over the ground. If you've ever seen a pumpkin vine, the way this sits is a lot like that. This is definitely different, but it's reminiscent of pumpkin.
I only found out what it was while attempting to identify something else. There are only so many variations on "spiky, thorny, prickly, white flowered, needley, Texas plant" you can try on Google before giving up.
Yes, it is as bad as all that makes it sound.
Texas Bullnettle is something you never-ever-ever want to touch. All those white dots you see in the pictures are "hairs" but are also known as "vicious glass-like needles." Those needles will break off, attach themselves in your skin, and release a toxin into you that causes a severe burning reaction that lasts around 45 minutes. This is an allergic reaction so for some people it can last days.
But onto the identification. They are between 1-3 feet high with several stems branching out of one root. The leaves are five pointed, crumpled looking, 2-4 inches (length and width both), and alternate on the stem. They have thick stems that are the most needley part of the whole plant, if broken it will ooze a milky sap. The white flowers are about an inch wide when open and are okay to touch, they usually have 5 sepals but can have 7 (no petals). The seeds are held in four separate pods that are attached together and are about 1-1.5 inches tall; they're not round, they have 4 vertical indents.
Every bit of the plant is covered in the .5 inch needles.
I'd repeat that you shouldn't touch them, but if you have eyes that work and half a brain if you saw one I think you could figure that one out yourself. I, on the other hand, decided to pull out a thick rag to attempt to bring some back with me. Me and my 2/5 of a brain learned better when the rag was easily punctured without me even pushing on it. I escaped unscathed.
All that said, apparently the seeds taste great and are good for you... if you can get to them.

Asiatic Dayflower

If you read the title I bet you can guess that this is not a native species. That being said they are found in about 2/3 of the contiguous US, so they are common while not being native.
These tiny little blue flowers were spread all over, they just started blooming and they are everywhere. That's a big part of how I know they aren't False Dayflowers as those flower much earlier in the year, that and the False ones are purple.
These are very peculiar flowers as they appear to only have two, large, blue petals, kind of like if you ripped the bottom three petals off a violet. This is misleading, Dayflowers do have three petals, the bottom one is just very very very itty-bitty and white. Above it's useful, normal looking, stamen it appears to have three tiny yellow flowers which are actually stamen that do not produce pollen (they're only to attract bugs).
The plant itself is usually grows up 6-12 inches, but can grow up to 3 feet along the ground. The flowers are no more than 1/2 an inch wide. The leaves grow alternately along the stem, the bases seem to wrap around the stem, and the edges curl upwards.

While being absolutely beautiful this plant is deemed a "noxious weed" by many. It was used in Chinese medicine for anti-inflammation and bringing down fevers as well as to treat tonsillitis. It also is used as a dye.

Persimmon

This is the American Persimmon, the first thing I've found that's edible and appetizing. Granted, people eat cicadas, but that is so unappetizing to me as to render myself incapable of eating them.
I kept passing by this tree without giving it a second thought because I was always preoccupied with the Blackjack Oak next to it. It wasn't until I noticed what appeared to be little green tomatoes growing in the tree that it really caught my attention.
These lovely deciduous trees grow between 30 and 70 feet; they prefer sun, and thrive both in forests and alone. Persimmons have male and female plants, so they can not self pollinate. They have deep roots which make them more drought resistant.
Persimmons have large oval leaves between 4-6" long. They are very glossy and shiny on the top while dull and pale on the bottom. The midvein protrudes from the back of the leaf, though it feels flattened and not round. The stem is very short (.5") and the leaves look droopy - like they're too heavy to do anything other than hang. The leaves keep a smooth, fresh feel even 24 hours after being plucked off the tree.
This is conjecture and my own experience, but all the male persimmon trees I've seen have slightly red stems and midveins on the leaves. I can't find any evidence of it online, but that's what the nearby ones look like.
The fruit of a Persimmon is between the size of a cherry tomato and a golf ball. They start hard and green and generally by the time the leaves start to fall the fruit is softening and turning yellow/orange. The shape is anywhere between an acorn and a sphere, they have 1-8 seeds, and they're topped with the four-parted round sepals (and those sepals are pretty tough).
The flowers show in May and June, they're white with four petals folding out of a bulby bottom.
The bark of a new tree is smooth and a pretty average brown. The grown tree has dark, deeply creviced, bark. The crevices are both vertical and horizontal giving the bark a checkerboard look.

There are also Texas Persimmons but they have rounded top edges to their leaves and pointed bottoms whereas the American has a rounded bottom edge and a point on the top.

Persimmons have many uses. The fruit can be eaten raw or cooked, you can make molasses out of the pulp, steep the leaves for tea, and roast the seeds for a coffee substitute.

Lizard

This little dude showed up after church on Sunday. I think he's a young Texas Spiny Lizard. He was about three inches long with his tail. At first I figured that had to be the extent of the size, that was how big the Florida lizards were that climbed all over the windows, but apparently... everything's bigger in Texas. That means that I can't find any evidence of there being any lizards here that are full grown at three inches.

His scales flip up at the tip, he has the little dark bars across his back, and a very thin tail. I'm not certain, though, as I knew it wasn't full grown and lizards can change a lot as they age.

Texas Spiny Lizards grow to between 7-11 inches long and have scales that turn up like spiked armor.

I don't know what else to say besides that he's a cute little lizard, it's too bad he's going to grow up to be big and ugly.

Cicada

I have a pretty solid stomach, but one thing that never fails to make me feel disgusted and twitchy is the sight of a living cicada, or a husk for that matter. I'm not quite sure why, but my utter loathing of them has the side effect of always knowing when I'm looking at one.
The thing that struck me the most as I peered at this nauseatingly alive specimen through the ultra zoom on my camera was how much more colorful these nasty little things were than their Northern counterparts. The green, brown, and black cicadas are of the Tibicen genus. But this one is the Tibicen resh as opposed to the common Northern Dogday cicada (Tibicen canicularis).
An American cicada is normally around an inch (sometimes a little more) long when full grown and are very thick bugs, being that their width is about a 1/3 of their length. They have large, wideset, compound eyes, and if you want to get close enough to look they have three tiny simple eyes in between their big ones. They have very short antenna, and their exoskeletons look tough, like armor. They have two sets of membranous (read: like clear stained glass) wings, the forewings are the much larger pair - so long that while they're at rest they reach past the end of the abdomen between 1/4 and 1/2 an inch.
This particular kind has a prevalently olive green head and thorax with a dark abdomen. Since they're such stubby creatures I can't exactly tell where the head ends and the thorax begins, but there's an upside-down green "v" on the back. The Dogday cicada has a "w" shape and a mostly brown head/thorax.

Hopefully you never have to see one, but only hear their distinctive mating call that sounds halfway between a rainstick and a squeaky swing.

Whatsit called... Cross Timbers

Not crossed, cross.
I wanted to know what the term for the environmental area which we live in. It's not flatlands or wetlands, it's not quite prairie either.
After much map hunting and cross examination I found an even more specific term: Cross Timbers.
It's a narrow strip of land between the wooded East and the Western Great Plains. It serves as a boundary for many different species of plants and animals between the East and West and has some unique species it's own as well.
The hardest part was finding a map with the overlay of Cross Timbers and then carefully comparing that to a map with towns and roads. It's so narrow that quickly looking might not give a good clue as to what towns are inside it.

White Rain Lily

The White Rain Lily, so beautiful I had to take a picture. Unfortunately, since we were on the side of the road/driveway I took the pictures too quickly and, alas, they are out of focus. This was easy to identify, I looked up white Texan flowers and in about three minutes I found it.
White Rain Lilies are so named because they pop up 2-3 days after a good rain, and they're white lilies. The name says it all.
In more detail, though, they have a 6-9 inch stem with all the leaves at the very bottom of the stem. Frequently this can look like it has no leaves, just a stem and a blossom (the blossom being about 2 inches wide). While it looks like it has six petals, that's because the three sepals are white just like the three petals. They are all pointed at the tips, but the sepals are slightly wider than the petals. They have six light yellow stamen, and the stems are a light green.
The ones I found we just opening. They begin to open in the evening and then stay open for a few days. This means you can find a Rain Lily anywhere from 2-6 days after a good rain.
All in all, a pretty little thing.

Ghost Ant

These are the itsy-bitsy yellow and black ants.
I read and I read to try and find what they were and every kind of little yellow ant species I read about that looked like these were European or Asian ants. Then I found about Pharaoh ants and that was closer except that while Pharaoh ants may be little and yellow they do not have the massive, nearly transparent, abdomen.
But finally, after searching for over a week (I know, I must be nuts to spend that much time trying to find what kind of ant is crawling all over the curbs), I found it. I did it! It can be hard to identify some plants and animals, but when they're eeney-teeny-weeney small it's specially hard.
Ghost ants are small 1/16th of an inch on average and have dark heads and thoraxes, but swollen, clearish, yellow abdomens (the antenna and legs are this color as well). They also have really long antenna.

Ghost ants like sweets, but will eat other foods just like other ants as well. They regularly nest outdoors but will go inside to find food or if it's too cold or dry outside. They like moist areas so when they're inside they gravitate towards bathrooms and kitchens and when outside they like dead grass, underneath tree bark, and plant stems.

Amazingly enough these ants only reached Texas in the early 1990s, but has already become a nuisance.

Blackjack Oak

I wasn't quite sure how to start looking for what this tree might be, what with it's dino-print like leaves. So I began looking for other words to describe it, and the magic word was "bell" they are bell shaped leaves.

Blackjack Oak is a type of Red Oak, and it's known for it's size - it's small size. They seldom ever reach above 45 feet high. It has the distinctive Oak leaf groupings; five clumped at the end of a small branch. The leaves are between 4-10 inches long and are as wide at the end. They are bell shaped, with three bumps on the top edge (they may or may not be very pronounced though) and the main veins look like the inside part of a peace symbol.
The trunk is deeply creviced with the bark protruding in block shapes with orangey-brown valleys between them. The main branches point mostly upwards in sharp contrast to the another common oak, Live Oak.
The other help to identification is if there are acorns. Blackjack Oaks have small acorns, only about 3/4 of an inch long with a width of half that.

These trees are very pretty and are well known for being a dense wood that's great for slow burning, though due to it's tendency toward "popping" is rather risky to burn in a fireplace. They thrive in sandy soil, so they're right at home here.

Grackle

The easiest way to tell if you're seeing a Grackle is to wait for the cackle. Odds are also good if there are no other similar birds within viewing distance you may want to take a closer look because they're such social birds it's rare to see one without another.

Grackles are the big, dark birds that can flock up into the thousands and are really annoying when they all make noise at once, and if they're flocking in great numbers they usually are.

There are two kinds of Grackle here in Texas (three if you count the shoreline variety, but since I'm not near there I'm not going to) the Common and Great-tailed.
The Common Grackle is the dark grey bird with bright shiny blue/purple head and blue/purple edged wings and tail. This is the smaller of the two species, being only 11-13 inches long.
The Great-tailed Grackle is what I've been seeing a lot of. There's a disparity in looks between males and females in this variety. The males are black with a purplish gloss and up to 17 inches long, the females are brown with a paler breast and about 13 inches long. They also have thinner beaks and longer tails than the Common Grackle.

But general Grackle identification calls for knowing something that both these species have in common.
They: appear almost stretched, like someone took a regular plump bird and elongated it; have long thin tails (1/3 - 1/2 of their entire body length) that can fan out about 90*; have beaks that are long and pointed, which is good for their omnivorous life (they'll eat anything, even other birds); have shockingly yellow eyes as adults. As Grackles are social birds they will frequently nest with or near other Grackles.

But like I said, their harsh call is the easiest way to identify them. It can be like rusty swings or a rusty frog. Here's a nice example (scroll down a little, it'll be under "keys to identification" on the left side, it's a fairly small bar with a play button next to it). I'm hoping I can get a video of them so I can put it up here instead of linking to someone else's grackle noises.

Fire Ants

This is a fire ant, this is also a no-no to touch.
They have a mahogany/copper brown head with a darker, almost black, abdomen. The workers vary from black to red and are anywhere between 1/8th and 1/4th of an inch, all sizes and colors can be found in the same mound.
Since ants are so small my easiest way to identify fire ants is to look at what they aren't. They are not orangey, bright red, black, or yellow; they are not large. They are just dark, vaguely red, little ants.
While most ants bite to spray acid, fire ants bite to hold so it can sting from the abdomen almost like a wasp.
Also, one easy way to tell if the ant nest is a fire ant nest is to disturb it quickly and get back quicker. Fire ants instantly swarm the surface in droves and if they find nothing up there they begin to spread outwards; they are intent on attacking the intruders. And if you are bitten soak the affected area in a solution of one part clorox to ten parts water, I'm told it works wonders.

Here's what happened when I accidentally stepped on a mound, luckily I noticed the ground gave way too easily and I had my camera with me and turned on.

Fire Ants Swarming @ Yahoo! Video

Praying Mantis

I don't know if Mantises have something for water or if their favorite prey loves water, but the only Mantises I've found have been right by the pool.
This one has the very common mantis look. It's about 2 inches long with iridescent, slightly transparent wings folded over it's abdomen. There's the triangle head with long antenna, front legs "praying" as it's hunting at the moment, and green legs but a pale body.
I don't know, but this particular specimen may be young. It certainly was very active and, like a mantis, followed my movements with it's eyes.

Whatsit called... Erosion

I learned about soil erosion, but watching it in fast forward is another thing. The ground is so sandy here that a hard rain will get this result. There was hardly any sand on the road yesterday, but today it's covered.
The picture gives a good indication of one of the benefits to plant roots, they keep the top soil in place even when it's less than ideal dirt. Any patch along the route we walked today that had less than full plant cover looked exactly like this - wet sand all over the road.

What I learned: Don't wear sandals after a rain unless sand in the sandals is okay.

Stinging Nettle

Look closely, this is Stinging Nettle. Apparently this little plant packs a itchy, nasty, horrible punch.
When not being mowed down this plant can grow between 3 and 7 feet high, but "dies down to the ground" during the winter - whatever that means.
It has long, thin, pointy leaves that are 1-6 inches long with finely pointed serrated edges; they grow in opposite pairs that alternate e.g. a North and South pair then an East and West pair. Both the leaves and stems are covered with stinging hairs
The flowers are greenish-brownish, are very small, and grow in small clumps along smaller stems that grow from next to the leaf's base.

A good word of advice is, don't touch it bare-handed. You can eat it though, but you must either cook it or dry it completely in order to not poison yourself with it.

Velvet Ants

Despite their name, they are not ants they are wasps. They do not bite, they sting. The males and females look drastically different, so I'll just focus on the ones I saw crawling on the ground.
Female Velvet Ants have no wings (males do), and thus end up stuck on the ground. They are very fast little buggers which is why I have no pictures despite seeing them about five times now. The word "velvet" is due to it's fuzzy appearance, like a bristlier version of bumblebee fuzz. Their coloring can be anywhere from yellow to red and many Velvet Ants have black bodies and the fuzz/hair is what's colored; the Cow Killer is different as it has black fuzz as well.
Velvet Ants are about 1/4 - 3/4 of an inch long and have spiney legs (all six of them) and one hinge in their antenna. While the females have stingers they generally avoid attacking, preferring to leave rather than sting. This is good as the female Velvet Ants are known as having extremely painful stings.

This looks like the ones I've seen seeing
Dasymutilla vestita


A note: their are many types of Velvet Ants as it's a type of Family, but the distinctly fuzzy ones are generally in the Dasymutilla Genus.

Here's another Velvet Ant

Prickly Pear

It's a genus, not a species, but there are so many species of Prickly Pears that it's very very hard especially since:
A) It's not the flowering season
B) I know nothing more about what to look for in cacti beyond their genuses. Is it round, tall, or flat?


Prickly Pear cacti are also known as Paddle Cacti which is easy to remember because they look like they're made up of lots of little ping-pong paddles.
They have two types of pokers: the long, straight spikes that are about 1-2 inches long, and the small barbed bristles. Both of these come out of the dark little polka dots. The fleshy pads are generally taller than they are wide, very flat, and are smaller at the bottom and rounded at the top. The flowers (and fruit) grow out the top of the pad. Even within species the color of the flowers can vary from yellow to red, but the look almost like a cross between tulips and roses at least as far as petals are concerned.
This particular species was short, no more than two feet, but depending on the species they can range from 1-6 feet tall and from 4 or 6 up to hundreds of the pads.

If you so happen to decide to eat the fruit of a Prickly Pear remember to peel it well or sand it well as the Indians used to. The little barbed bristles I told you about also grow on the fruit and that is not something you want stuck to the inside of your mouth/throat/stomach. From what I've read the fruit is safe to eat, you can even eat the new fleshy pads. But don't just take my word on it and go eat the nearest cactus, I don't want to be responsible should anything bad happen; go talk to someone who can actually identify the species of cactus and knows about poisonous plants. The ripe fruit looks like a red, puffed version the pads themselves.



Did you know? There's a species of Prickly Pear that grows from Illinois to New York. Yeah, Northern Cacti, can you believe it?

Spider Wasp

This red-orange wasp with vibrantly blue wings is a Spider Wasp. They're about 1/2 - 1 inch long, and have thin dark brown rings around their red-orange abdomens. Spider wasps, so named because they paralyze spiders and lay their eggs in the still living arachnids, can be found all over; this particular kind, Tachypompilus ferrugineus (that's what it looks like), I've seen pictures people have sent to bug sites from down in Texas up to Pennsylvania.

I don't know what else to say: pointy-ended wasp abdomen, brown antenna, six legs... red-orange body and bright-jewel-toned blue wings.

[edit]
I saw another Spider Wasp today (9-4-09) stuck in my window, this was was dark blue to black bodied with red wings and about 1.25 inches long. I just thought it was interesting that they're both Spider Wasps, but the coloring is flipped.