The care of Bluebonnets

It has been a mild, warm year across Southeast Texas with the last week punctuated by heavy showers. Bluebonnets wave from the greenways through the Memorial Parkway; I spot a few smiling up out of the concrete beneath a stop sign in my neighborhood in Houston. They are joined by baby pink Buttercups and my favorite wildflower, the Firewheel. 

Wildflower blooms are a beautiful, ephemeral moment in nature, punctuating the building heat of spring. Hair-stripe butterflies and honeybees dance from flower to flower, gathering nectar and coral colored pollen.

Here in Texas, the few species of Lupine that we generally refer to as Bluebonnets bloom in March, April, and into May. The warm season will be heralded in by the Bluebonnets and meander through spring in an array of color, all of them calling to their own time honored insect companions. In days soon to come, the coreopsis will dance with hoverflies.

For now, the sun rises and sets across ample mounds of vibrant periwinkle. 

In caring for and celebrating Bluebonnets and other native flowers, it is important that we center the work of Indigenous people throughout ‘Texas’ who have cared for this land we all love since time immemorial or displacement. As a white person growing up in Texas, collective adoration for the beloved Bluebonnets never extended out to the people who are kin to this land. When speaking in admiration and thanks, may we also know the people of this beautiful place and speak their names clearly.

The Karankawa, Akokisa, Carrizo original caretakers and many other Indigenous people that have called Southeast 'Texas' home. From the live oak groves and dewberry dappled piney woods, the relationship and devotion that Indigenous people have with this land echoes out across the region.

Bluebonnets aren’t a great plant to rush out and buy for this years bloom. Rather, they are beings that appreciate planning, as are many wildflowers. Their copper colored seeds spring from twisted bean pods in early summer, scattering to lie in wait for the ensuing frost of winter and the rain of spring. Bluebonnets, like many plants, react to environmental stimuli such as temperature and moisture. While their blooms are annual, the bluebonnet’s forbs will stay in the same area, growing in over the years. 

They can remain dormant until the conditions are right and they have matured enough to bloom. Caring for wildflower patches, like many acts of restoration, call us to sow seed for blooms we may never see. An act of trust and belief that one day the conditions will be right. Similarly, our words and actions are seeds, carrying us to places not yet realized.

The Bluebonnets tell us, “All in good time.”

As we enjoy the familiar blue oceans stretching along the road, may we also appreciate all the Bluebonnets offer. Their life sustaining pollen and nectar; the carbon of their bodies that will feed another generation. A part of the legume family, Bluebonnets actively fix nitrogen in the soil for all as they grow. 

Stewardship is a life-long practice that we can choose, at any time. To commit ourselves to the wellbeing of all. Our individual and community relationships with the Earth live within us, always. Just as with the bluebonnets, it is just a matter of time.