Secrets Under the Snow; Standing Cypress

Photo: Richard Freiheit

In my last post I recalled collecting foxglove seed on a cold winter day in 2006, and how foxglove is now well established at LLELA.  Although today is once again a cold, frozen over winter day, under the ice and snow there lives a wonderful secret.  Since last fall, standing cypress seedlings have been quietly forming little Christmas-tree-like rosettes that now lie hidden in congested groups under the snow.  They have spent their entire first year in this form, barely resembling their majestic second year siblings.  But by May or June, Ipomopsis rubra, or standing cypress, will have shot up to around five feet, and produced one of my very favorite displays of color.  Bright red or sometimes orange trumpet like blossoms cascade down each stalk, drawing attention from various insects and hummingbirds.  When walking in one of these incredible congested second year stands, I feel as if I were walking in a miniature forest of flowering color.  By the end of the year, the color will be gone, and each plant will have died off, leaving pods of profuse seeds behind to restart the biennial cycle.

Photo Richard Freiheit

Photo Richard Freiheit

Although I enjoy the color, the many deer at LLELA seem to enjoy cypress for its flavor.  As the time for blossoming approaches, and each singular stalk creeps higher and higher, I often find numerous chewed off cypress tops.  The plants don’t seem to mind, as they simply produce multiple stalks from the chewed off tips.  More flowers (and seed) for everyone! 

Photo Richard Freiheit

Standing cypress is one of the best success stories to date regarding a species once lost at LLELA.   Hand collected from local remnant prairies, mixed with grasses and other native seeds, Ipomopsis rubra is now easily collected in bulk, and germinates so readily that we have used it at LLELA as a marker species to show where we have sown seed.  If you collect this one on your own, be prepared with a face mask and goggles after it dries.  The dust particles of Ipomopsis rubra are a VERY strong irritant, and we have learned the hard way not to even open a bin of this seed indoors.

My First Treasure Hunt; Foxglove

Given that I have been involved with LLELA since winter of 2006, when I went on my very first treasure hunt, this blog isn't going to be chronological.  Rather, past impressions as they seem fit, blended with the super cool from the here and now.

Courtesy Richard Freiheit

So, first impression; hunting the surprisingly not-so-elusive foxglove (Penstemon cobaea) seed  on a cool day, when everything seemed dead to the world.  My mood matched the grayness of the weather, so my brother Richard decided I needed to get outdoors, smell some fresh air and feel alive again.  Yeah right.  Whatever.  So we grabbed paper bags and drove to a park we had played in as children.  Okay, what are we doing here?  A little too old and a little too cold for the swings Richard.
  But Richard didn't want to swing.  He walked me into the dry grasses and showed me sticks coming up from the ground with little capsules attached. "Collect these gently, and don't spill the seeds 'till they're in the bag," he said.  Sure enough, each odd shaped pod was full of little correspondingly odd shaped black seeds.  After my first attempt of snapping off a stick, and watching seeds fly everywhere BUT my bag, I knew what he meant.
  A few minutes more of holding THEN snapping sticks, and my bag began to have a nice rattling sound to it.  Before long, there was quite a little pile of blackness at the bottom of my brown bag.  And that was just what had spilled from the yet-to-be-processed pods.  All the while, Richard told me stories of years past when he would pick these flowers, not knowing anything about them other than how pretty they were.  Every year, he would present a bouquet of them to our mother.  This year, we would collect seed for his job as Restoration Manager at LLELA.  As we crunched through what Richard called big bluestem and little bluestem I began to see my growing pile of blackness as a treasure, ignored by people speeding by on the highway next to us.  Blinded by the grayness of the weather and the rush of the holiday season, they failed to see a most beautiful gift right under their noses; tiny specks of life waiting to be planted, waiting to grow, to blossom, and to spread new life as the cold returned once again.  I had found my first treasure, and that's when I got hooked.

Courtesy Richard Freiheit

Penstemon cobaea, or foxglove, has since become a story of  success at LLELA.  Although some stands existed before restoration began, this species can now be found April to May in numerous locations, as it germinates and grows readily, coming back year after year, from those seeds I had collected that depressing winter day in 2006.

Where to begin...

LLELA; 2,000 acres of severely degraded undeveloped land in the heart of Lewisville Texas.
LLELA; the place where I gather, propagate, and restore native Texas plant genetics.
LLELA; just a weird acronym that stands for the place where I play scientist. 

Okay, I jumped in, my feet are officially wet, and the water seems fine so far...

You see, I've never read a blog, much less written one.  The closest I've come is looking at (I didn't say picking up) the appropriate "For Dummies" book at Barnes & Noble.  I'm no dummy, but I am ignorant of how this all works.  Forgive my learning curve as I hit the ground not running, but tripping, falling, rolling over a few times, hopefully getting back up, but eventually learning, and possibly sharing.

What I have to share are my experiences, observations, successes, and even failures encountered along the way, as a small group of people struggle through bureaucratic red tape, droughts, floods, fire, and more as we work to bring a piece of Texas back to the way it was before Europeans arrived and did all the things that were done to the land.  Granted we can't know exactly what that land actually looked like, but we can make a reasonable guess at restoration from tiny remnants of prairie that still exist, tucked away in forgotten corners and easements, hidden like treasure to be found by those who know how and where to look.

Sowinging Seed -- Courtesy Richard Freiheit

So that's what I do in a nutshell.  Let the treasure hunt begin!

(Oh yeah, LLELA is also known as the Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area.)