Spring 2023 Bluebonnets

— With spring fully underway in Austin, Texas, this week I decided it was time to go out and look for what wildflowers are blooming currently in this area. City streets, highways, and parks show a good presence of some wildflowers. Just recently, I posted a few images of flowers already blooming as early as February 2023. Our rose bushes, for example, even had bee activity in mid-December. Then, in January, several Chinese Sacred Lily blooms, or paperwhites, as some prefer to call them, began to surface in our garden. In late February and early March, redbud bushes added pink colors all over the city. Lately, though, social media is flooded with bluebonnets, the state’s official flower. Back on March 7, 1901, the Texas legislature proclaimed the bluebonnet the official State Flower of Texas.

Opportunities to photograph bluebonnets are easily found everywhere in Texas at this time of the year. I did not have to drive far to get several images. However, this time I thought I would look for the lesser abundant varieties of bluebonnets. I had previously seen white bluebonnets, but never had I had the opportunity to see the rich and lush color of a red or maroon bluebonnet. Well, that has been checked off my list. As a bonus, I also photographed the pink variety of bluebonnets. According to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center‘s Director of Horticulture, Andrea DeLong-Amaya, these color varieties appear because of recessive genes in the flowers. They are indeed mutations. So, here are three photos I captured of white, pink, and maroon bluebonnets. Be sure to click on the small images to see the flowers in larger sizes.

This is also my entry for Denzil Nature challenge on Signs of Spring.