Bluebonnet: Our Texas State FlowerBy Pat Gibson March 18, 1987 |
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All along the road sides for the next two or three months we will see fields of flowers. Part of this is due to natural seeding, but quite a bit of it is due to the work of the Texas Highway Department. I remember the first trip I made to Texas as a bride. It was in the spring and the flowers were beautiful all along the road sides. I asked my husband if we could stop and pick a few so his mother could tell me their names. He explained that there was a law in Texas against picking the wildflowers. When I expressed surprise, he pointed out the lack of flowers beyond the fences. I thought the cows had eaten them all.
My mother-in-law bought me my first book on Texas wildflowers and my much used copy of Peterson's Field Guide to the Birds of Texas. Over the years I have learned to appreciate the beauty of the roadside flowers here in Texas . One of my favorites, that I have not been able to get to grow here above Sulfur Creek, is the bluebonnet.
The bluebonnet was chosen as the state flower in 1901. When the Colonial Dames of Texas requested the designation, they specified the flower chosen as Lupinus subcarnosus. Now, it just so happens that this particular kind of bluebonnet is a scrawny variety that is not nearly as beautiful as the more common Lupinus Texensis. To correct this problem, the Legislature in 1971 declared all varieties of bluebonnet to be the state flower.
The bluebonnet is a member of the pea family just like the mesquite and the redbud. It has a seed pod that looks like a pea, but I wouldn't recommend eating them. There is also a flower that grows here above Sulfur Creek that looks somewhat like a bluebonnet. It is called a scurvy pea. The leaves a fuzzy and it stinks. It is larger than a bluebonnet and closer to purple than the state flower. Some day I hope to get bluebonnets to grow on our place.
There are several stories from folklore as to why the blue bonnet is called a bluebonnet. The most common is because it looks like a woman's sunbonnet. It also has been called the buffalo clover and the wolf flower. One rather implausible story is of the Indian maiden who sacrificed her doll to bring the rain. Her name was supposedly Blue bonnet or the doll was wearing a bluebonnet. I find that story a little farfetched and like the one about the child losing her bonnet during the trip across the prairie and it was magically transformed into the flower. There is also one about the Indian maiden sold away from the lakes of the north to the tribes of the prairie and prayed to see the blue lakes once more. She was rewarded with fields of bluebonnets.
There are many different legends about how things got their names. I was taught that behind each myth or legend there is a true event, but that's another story.
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