Author: Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall

The person behind The Hermits' Rest blog and many others. I'm a certified Texas Master Naturalist and love the nature of Milam County. I manage technical writers in Austin, help with Hearts Homes and Hands, a personal assistance service, in Cameron, and serve on three nonprofit boards. You may know me from La Leche League, knitting, iNaturalist, or Facebook. I'm interested in ALL of you!

The Elusive Texas Star in Milam County

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by Sue Ann Kendall

The State Fungus of Texas is the Texas Star (or Devil’s Cigar) (Chorioactis geaster). It’s not spotted often, so wheneever you see it, it’s newsworthy. When it was spotted for a second time at Inks Lake State Park last December, it made the news all over Texas. This is just one of the articles. There’s also an article on them in this month’s Texas Coop Power magazine. So, when my neighbor Vicki sent me a photo and asked me if I’d ever seen anything like this before, my heart skipped a beat.

I knew exactly what it was!

I told her it was rare and exciting. She looked it up, and we both geeked out over it for a while. The next day I went over to her property to get a look (I’d also hoped to pet her minature horse, but she was in the next pasture.) The mushroom was in a field of post oak trees, which confused me.

However, when I got closer to the spot where the Texas Star was located, conveniently flagged by Vicki, I saw it was exactly where it should be. It was right next to the stump of a cedar elm tree (that’s basically all we have, the oaks and the elms). We’d recently had a lot of rain, so it was fruiting right when it was supposed to.

There it is!

As soon as I got my own photos, I uploaded the observation to iNaturalist, where it was quickly confirmed. It had already burst its spores out, so we missed the exciting hissing sound the Texas Star makes, but it was fun to feel its leathery “petals,” and see if it smelled funny (I couldn’t smell anything). I looked around but didn’t see any more on her property. I also looked at the dozens of cedar elm stumps in my woods, but no Texas Stars have turned up.

It pretty much looks the same from all angles.

As I looked at the information on iNat and Wikipedia about the fungus, I learned a lot. First of all, I’m pretty lucky to live where it grows. It’s only found here in the middle of Texas and a small place in Japan. That makes me wonder if they are really the same fungus, but I’m sure professionals have looked into that.

This iNat screenshot isn’t the whole Texas Star range, but it shows how few observations there are in this part of the world.

There were observations near Davilla and Buckholtz, but only the Davilla one was research grade, making my observation the second confirmed one in Milam County. And we are way to the east of its usual range. I was excited!

This map has most of Milam Couonty in it, and shows the three potential observations.

Keep on the lookout for these if you have decaying cedar elms (Ulmus crassifolia) and we have another nice rain (which I assume will happen soon). To learn more, read any of these articles:

Two out of Three isn’t Bad for the Bur Oaks

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By Carolyn Henderson

Anyone remember planting the three Bur Oaks in Cameron parks last April? Two of the three are doing great.

About 10 members and friends planted them in Wilson-Ledbetter Park, Cameron City Park, and Orchard Park in honor of Earth Day. The trees at Orchard Park and Wilson-Ledbetter Park are growing, which indicates they will survive. Cameron City Park tree has mysteriously died.

Orchard Park

Both of the living trees were planted close to the bodies of water in each park, and then Liz Lewis and I proceeded to water them every week. They both survived a very heavy wind in a storm the day after we planted them. The wind bent both of them toward the ground. It practically laid the Wilson-Ledbetter Park Bur Oak on the ground. Michelle and Oscar Lopez and I went out to check on them and found it. We staked it upright to a degree. The top part is alive, but it really seems to be coming back from the ground.

Wilson-Ledbetter tree

The Orchard Park oak also was found leaning from the storm, and I pushed it back in place. Then the heat wave set in on the area. Liz and I took water to the three at least once a week. We used cat litter jugs to carry it. The City Park oak had lost all its leaves early on, but resprouted them in two weeks. I labeled that transplant shock. I was watering it once a week.

Orchard Park tree.

Later, I was told someone else (not a member) was watering the tree regularly. I drive by it frequently. It had green leaves on it until one day it didn’t. It was dead at that time. It is a mystery why it died. I have left it there for now, just in case it sprouts from the bottom like the Wilson Ledbetter oak has done.

City Park tree.

I’d like to plant Redbuds out a Wilson-Ledbetter, but it might be too much to water.

Note from Sue Ann Kendall: I had a bur oak in my yard in Round Rock. It lost its leaves each winter. Maybe that’s what’s going on in the City Park tree. If they all resprout in spring, do cut the sprouts from the base so the trees will have one trunk. If they don’t, encourage one trunk to regrow.

Just thoughts. I could be wrong. it happens.

Turks Caps Still Blooming (at least pre-freeze this week)

Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall1 Comment

By Carolyn Henderson

Turks Caps are easy to grow from the little red apple-looking seed pods they put out in late fall. I have verified that through an experiment I decided to undertake last December 2022. 

I harvested the seed pods from a very large, pink Turks Cap at the El Camino Real Master Naturalist Wildscape at the Bird and Bee Farm on FM 334 with the hope of growing some in my yard. Turks Caps naturally have a vivid red flower. These had been modified to bloom a light pink. The one at the wildscapesits right next to an even bigger Red Turks Cap.

I googled how to process the seed pods. It was recommended to put them in the refrigerator whole until late February or early March. In late February of 2023, I then did as recommended and removed the seeds from the red pod. Each pod produced quite a few seeds. I planted 16 of them in seed starter packs. I should add that I also took a baby plant from the Pink Turks Cap and put it in a pot at the same time I took the seed pods. I planted one full pod in the flower bed where I intended to put all of them. It is a heavily shaded bed which Turks Caps are known to like. The potted one was getting 6 hours of sun a day.

All of them grew. The potted one grew very tall since it had a head start, I think, and bloomed a lot. Butterflies and bees are very fond of the blooms. I moved the starter plants to a flower bed in my front yard in late March. The full pod plant grew at a faster pace than the seeded plants, but all of them did grow. They grew the most in the shadiest part of the bed. 

The whole pod plant bloomed first of the ones in the bed. About half of the others bloomed in the fall. The blooms were all pink – at first. To my surprise, I went to water them one day, and one in the shadiest part of the bed was also blooming red at the same time it was blooming pink. The potted plant had pink blooms throughout the season. The others native gene pool came through. It would appear that they can be planted in any manner I tried.

All of them were still alive up to the freeze. I fully expect them to come back in the spring – even a small one my son weedeated down because he thought it was a weed. It re-sprouted quickly. What I really want to see is what color they bloom.

Getting the Purple Martin Apartment House Ready to Open

Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall5 Comments

by Donna Lewis

Hello all my Martin Friends in Central Texas.

I last showed you how I got my gourd rack ready for the return of the Martins.

Now let’s look at readying the apartment house for the Martins.

It has been cleaned, emptied of all nesting materials and covered last August when the Martins left this area. Then the house was lowered down and secured till the next season which usually starts in Central  Texas in late January and on.

At my site, February 14th is the normal time for my friends to return.

Once again, the first scouts are normally males looking to get a nest they like. They will then start singing trying to attract females to the site. It is a beautiful song.

Right now I uncovered the house. I inspected it to make sure no wasps, spiders or anything else had taken up residence since I last closed the house.

I then slide in the nest box that I have put fresh dry pine needles in all of the 26 compartments. I also have an early arrival door that goes over the openings. It has only the door for the birds to enter. When the summer heat has arrived and there are babies in the house, I switch the doors to ones that are made with more ventilation.

It can be extremely hot inside the houses. That is why I have aluminum houses painted white to reflect the heat as much as possible. So now, I recover the house and keep it as low as it will go.

When I hear the Martins arriving, I remove the cover and roll it up. Then I only open a few holes at a time. That will keep some of the House Sparrows from taking over. It is absolutely a requirement to keep them out. They can ruin an entire colony by killing the Martins.

So right now is the time to get new or existing ready to open at a moment’s notice. It’s kinda like a fire drill. So naturally, the weather is going to be cold, windy and rainy. That is why you want to do what you can while your hands are warm.

So my timeshare is OPEN, come on in!  I just love the Martins and all birds.

I am part of all that I have met.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Spider Hunting on Alligator Creek

Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall4 Comments

by Eric Neubauer

Sorry to miss the last meeting, but it was prime (for January) wolf spider weather in the early evening and I had unfinished business down near Alligator Creek.

Two images are attached. Both are adult males and would be considered large wolf spiders with a body length approaching a half inch. One is Tigrosa georgicola, a common species around here. I’ve seen them near the creek several times.

The other [P111694] has been baffling me after I found the first one on New Year’s Eve. Field identification guidance is fairly well developed for the larger wolf spiders, but there were reasons for eliminating all of them. I’ve found three now, so the first wasn’t an oddity.

Originally, I thought it might be Alopecosa, which only has a few images on the internet. At present I’m thinking it might be a morph of the other species I found there, Tigrosa georgicola. If I was still taking typical wolf spider photos, that is dorsal views only that weren’t highly detailed, it would have ended up as “something in the Schizocosa ocreata species group” and that would be the end of it.

As it is now, I can’t get beyond subfamily Lycosinae but am favoring a rare morph of an existing Tigrosa species or much less likely an undescribed Tigrosa species. Considering all three were found in the same area, they could all be siblings. Their mother would be proud.

I suppose there could be another option: a hybrid of Tigrosa georgicola and Schizocosa perplexa but I’d think the two are too unrelated to produce offspring.