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Where have all the wildflowers gone?

There has been a gradual loss of native species in Texas since colonization beginning in the early 1700s. This loss applies to both plants and animals. Diversity has only been augmented by the introduction of alien species.

With regard to wildflowers the causes are many. The majority of arable land has been turned over to grazing. The combination of horse, cow, goat and sheep has favored the introduced plant over the native.

The use of land for row crops is even more dramatic. For example, the entire Blackland Prairie system was destroyed primarily by row crops with grazing and hay cutting picking up the last parcels.

Less obvious is the loss of pollinators. Pesticide use, habitat alteration, night-time illumination, mowing and swamp draining have all contributed to the detriment of our insect population/composition. The introduction of alien organisms have even decimated the non-native honeybee - an insect that picked up the slack as native pollinators disappeared.

Even less obvious to the general public is the promotion of non-native plants - particularly grasses. The first non-native grass to impact Texas was bermudagrass. This grass has been seeded from range land to highway right-of-way for generations. It has displaced and out-competed our native grasses the longest. Next was the introduction of a host of drought and graze tolerant grasses - Green Sprangletop (Leptochloa dubia), King Ranch Bluestem (Bothriochloa iscnaemum), Weeping Lovegrass (Eragrostis curvula) and the "rye" grasses (genus Lolium) which have both out-competed and poisoned our native grasses. The poisoning of our wildflowers by alleopathic exudations has been particularly dramatic in this century.

If the highway department did not seed our bluebonnets and Drummond phlox the public would be unaware of their existence. As it stands now (Fall 2007) our children will never see a bluebell, winecup or prairie foxglove - wildflowers that we took for granted for so many years.