Wildflowers and Other Plants of Texas Beaches and Islands

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Summary: Wildflowers and Other Plants of Texas Beaches
Review: [Wildflowers and Other Plants of Texas Beaches and Islands by Alfred Richardson], Native Plant Society News, 20 (May-June 2002): 9.

As summer approaches, the lure of the Texas shoreline intensifies. It is hard to resist the seaside's arresting sunrises, whispering breezes, rustling surf, and expansive sand dunes crowned by swaying sea oats (Uniola paniculata) or seacoast bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium). In such a vast setting, however, it is easy to overlook the subtler features of the landscape, specifically the often quiet array of coastal native flowers. This more restrained floral texture of the coastal terrain of our state is the subject of Alfred Richardson's lavishly produced Wildflowers and Other Plants of the Texas Beaches and Islands.

Many who already own a Texas wildflower field guide may wonder whether they also need this particular work when identifying coastal plants. This is a reasonable question. So I compared Richardson's Wildflowers with Theodore F. Niehaus's Field Guide to Southwestern and Texas Wildflowers, Geyata Ajilvsgi's Wildflowers of Texas, Campbell and Lynn Loughmiller's Texas Wildflowers, Delena Tull and George Oxford Miller's A Field Guide to Wildflowers, Trees and Shrubs of Texas, and especially James H. Everitt and D. Lynn Drawe's Trees, Shrubs and Cacti of South Texas. My comparison disclosed that there were a large number of plants included in Richardson's book that appeared in only one of these other useful volumes. For the purpose of identifying these particular plants, in other words, you would need to own (and carry) all five of these guides.

Equally persuasive concerning the value of Richardson's Wildflowers are the considerable number of plants it lists that are not found in any of the other five volumes. Exclusive to Richardson's book are, for example, the tiny pink pyramid flower (Melochia pyramidata), the blue funnels of Ojo de Víbora (Evolvulus alsinoides var. hirticaulis), the yellow-eyed fringed disks of Corpus Christi fleabane (Erigeron procumbens), the marigold-looking false dandelion (Pyrrhopappus pauciflorus), the sun-splashed branches of seaside goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens), and the lemony disks of showy nerveray (Tetragonotheca repanda). There are other plants that could be named here as well, but even this short list suggests that native-plant enthusiasts heading for the coast would benefit immensely from owning Richardson's book.

His volume is also handsomely produced, a pleasure to peruse even at home. The close-up photographs of 275 plants are large in scale, extraordinary in detail, and rich in color. The size and lucidity of these 316 photographs will facilitate efforts to identify flora in the field. As befits a field guide, moreover, the explanatory text is presented succinctly in an outline format: plant family, scientific name, leaf description, flower profile, fruit identification, habitat summary, bloom period, and overall observation. Most of the textual entries are comprised of a single sentence or simply a few words.

Richardson's book is so attractive and rewarding that I am reluctant to express my slight caveat. The volume is arranged by floral families, and these families are associated in terms of their inter-relationships and similarities, with their respective genera presented alphabetically. Such an organization appeals to the botanist's desire for taxonomic order. But for the average person in the field, a guide with flowers grouped by color tends to be more efficient and effective in enabling the identification of a plant. However, I want to affirm that this disadvantage is very minor and in no way measurably detracts from the considerable value of Wildflowers and Other Plants of Texas Beaches and Islands. At once beautiful and useful, this field guide is the perfect "beach book" for nature enthusiasts.

William J. Scheick, a former NPSOT vice-president, is also a member of the Central Texas Horticulture Council and a frequent contributor to Texas Gardener.