The caliche from home does have a lot more seedlings sprouting now that look promising. For this year, the remaining big plants are a little bluestem and a Solidago rigidiscula!
I think the seed from home being fresh helped, as one came up very quickly this summer. All of these happened after we bought two plants at the native plant festival haha. This verbena seed took almost a year I think to come up, and now two little seedlings are up too. So the many of them just want to take their own time. Its leaves are different. More like I expected for Verbena halei but I had it labeled where I thought it was prairie. We shall find out!
A fingertip sized baby thistle!Bigger thistle baby!Another thistle rosette They apparently overwinter this way This rosette I’m not sure if it’s texanum or undulatum. I haven’t seen any undulatum seeds up yet in my pots. This is the same individual as to the left, showing the white closely hairy underside of the thistle leaves. These five thistle rosettes are probably mostly or all texanum, based on that only my texanum seeds have germinated into similar size rosettes. These are all at my parents’ house, where I got the seeds. Yay!
This beautiful young friend has obviously been growing for a while since it has half a dozen leaves, but I only spotted it recently. We had planted blackjack acorns under the red oak in several places in hopes of starting a grove (they’ll probably stay understory height until the red oak dies in the hopefully long-distant future). this one is north of the blackberries and south of the one beautyberry.
We planted two baby Arkansas yuccas a week or so ago in front of the house. The bigger one (see next picture) is doing fine. this little one, which I am pointing at, has been struggling hard and has about half a leaf remaining. At first I just watered it extra but now I have added a shade and moisture retention barrier on the west side consisting of a wall of sticks and leaves about 2 inches high. I point at the bigger yucca seedling. It has three skinny blue-green leaves. A stray strawberry leaf is visible in the back.
I moved several pots of flowering plants to where they can drop seeds and also keep the dog from trampling the Baptisia australis in her borkenings at the neighbor dogs. I also moved pavers to try a new human path. I planted the silverleaf nightshade and fern acacia too. This let me rearrange the pots here in a more tidy and compact arrangement.