More Aizoaceae Plants

These Aizoaceae plants performed brilliantly through three seasons, Fall, Winter, Spring.  Summer not so much.



Delosperma Fire Spinner



Delosperma Fire Spinner



Delosperma basuticum or Rabiea albipunta

Find the Pauraque



Here is a little game that we played in the Rio Grand Valley of Texas called find the Pauraque.



This bird in the nightjar family hunts by night and sleeps by day.  It has a very large mouth, good for raking in large insects in flight, they have also been known eat the occasional bat (big mouth).

Not a Pauraque



A similar bird also frequents the woods behind my house in Austin, Texas.  The male
Chuck-will’s-widow makes repetitive calls late at night similar to the more familiar Eastern Whip-poor-will, all part of the same family of night birds.  Chuck-wills-widow



Expert level bird finder's only!

Aizoaceae

The Aizoaceae Family contains about 2,000 species of diminutive stone plants, carpet weeds, vygies, mesembs, and ice plants most of which come from South Africa.  Many resemble pebble stones or living carpets and have incredible flowers of many colors.



Aloinopsis spathulata



I have tried growing about a dozen different varieties, in almost all cases I have been able to have a level of success getting them to thrive spread and flower but usually only for a season or a year, four years at the most before the plant dies.  Typically they die in the summer heat (The cactus bed in full sun could easily be 125 degrees at the surface) and it seems like the plants go from sick to completely dead in about 48 hours.



I wish I knew how to keep these alive long term in Texas.  It is neat having a succulent that flowers in the winter to create a cycle of blooms that keeps interest all year round.

Green Hairstreak

Juniper Hairstreak (Callophrys gryneus)

Although this picture is blurry, it shows my strategy for anchoring a bare root Ocotillo to the ground, the problem was that in order to form roots the Ocotillo needed to not move back forth with a breeze (that would break any new roots or worse uproot the entire plant as there was almost nothing underground).  So to counter balance the extremely top heavy canes I drove four stakes into the bed and then tied the top of each stake to cross beams in an "x" pattern that essential put downward pressure on the crown of the plant keeping it quite still no matter how strong the breeze.



One of the best native Texan plants I have found for desert landscaping, Four-nerve Daisy (Tetraneuris scaposa). 



Mammillaria heyderi  - these are the best tasting fruits of the many native cactus fruits I have tried.  Sweet and tart like strawberries, where most other cactus fruits are too bland for my taste.



Mammillaria heyderi -Grows from I-35 West into East Arizona where it forms nearly flat discs in mostly rocky soil.  Fruits can be red or purple, flowers can be white, cream and apparently sometimes yellow (which I have only seen in photographs).

Queens vs Soldiers

How can you tell whether the butterfly in your garden is a Queen Butterfly (Danaus gilippus) or a Soldier Butterfly (Danaus eresimus)?  Here are a few good sites with better diagnostic illustrations and descriptions than I have provided here:  butterflyfunfacts.com, www.greatstems.com.  I was surprised to learn that most of the butterflies that come to my blue mistflower plants each fall are actually Soldier Butterflies.



Queen Butterfly (Danaus gilippus) or Soldier Butterfly (Danaus eresimus)?  The lack of white spots in FW postmedian area points to this one being a Soldier.  Most guide books don't put Soldier's beyond a few strays this far North...Global Warming maybe?, there are tons around my house in the fall.




Queen Butterfly in front with a Solider Butterfly behind.



This one is a male (see dark scent patches) and a Soldier (see white faint spots in hind wing).



Danaus eresimus, Soldier Butterfly



Ariocarpus fissuratus



Danaus gilippus, Queen Butterfly

Swallowtail and Cactus part 3



One of my favorite photographs, showing the multicolor transparent spines of this Fishhook Cactus (Sclerocactus uncinatus) bought from Rio Grande Cacti out of New Mexico.  This cactus, also known as the Catclaw Cactus, is native to West Texas, likes it very hot and dry and is hardy to at least 10 degree Fahrenheit.

Mammillaria pottsii




Heraclides rumiko aka Papilio rumiko

Heraclides rumiko aka Papilio rumiko

Swallowtail and Cactus part 2

I raised this butterfly, a Western Giant Swallowtail (Heraclides rumiko / Papilio rumiko), in a plastic jar during the winter, to my surprise he decided to eclose on a rather cool day.  I took him outside and let him dry his wings in my cactus garden.  He hung out for about two hours (which made him easy to photograph) before flying away when the sun came out.