Fewer Wildflowers Forecast For This Spring, UT’s Wildflower Center Says

By Tim Taliaferro in Blog on March 8, 2011 at 4:12 pm | No Comments

Wildflowers can hardly be anything less than beautiful, but this year the display may be a little thinner than Texans might like.

Due to little rain in much of the state last fall, this year’s crop of bluebonnets and other early spring bloomers isn’t likely to equal last year’s banner season, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center predicts.

“I’m cautiously optimistic at this point and think it’s going to be a decent year, but not a banner year,” senior Wildflower Center director Damon Waitt says.

Cold weather also contributed, the center’s plant conservationists say, and so there is little evidence that wildflowers are ready to bloom yet in any part of Texas.

The good news out of last year’s bumper crop, though, is that more seeds were produced; they could yield more flowers in the next few years if weather conditions cooperate.

Here’s a map of where to check out wildflowers as the season gets going.

Photo courtesy of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.