West Texas Botanizing
Are you ready for some more West Texas botanizing?
I’ve finally finished uploading all the “critter” images from my West Texas trip of June 1-15 and have now begun to organize and upload my thousands of plant images. The first batch of about 15 or 20 species is from a quick stop at a Rest Area along US 190 near the Pecos River east of Iraan, TX (Crockett Co.). Very quickly, the uploads will turn to my images from TNC’s Davis Mountains Preserve where I spent three full days and parts of two others birding, botanizing, and generally iNatting in the higher mountains at 6000 to 8300+ ft of elevation (June 1-5). We then relocated to a private ranch in the north part of the Davis Mountains at somewhat lower elevation where the bioblitzing continued (including another several hundred plant images, June 5-8). On June 8, after departing the Davis Mountains, I made a full circuit around Balmorhea Lake, taking the opportunity to photograph some of the plants of the wetlands and saline flats surrounding that waterbody. A final chapter in this Trans-Pecos trip will be a set of uploads from the Fort Stockton area (Pecos Co., June 9-16) while I suffered through a week-long “hotel arrest” waiting for truck repairs so that I could finally head home.
I’m hoping some of my botanically-inclined iNat friends and followers can help confirm a lot of these plant images. Some will be easier than others. The Davis Mountains has a very interesting botanical array with many endemics and lots of species found only in the “sky islands” of the Trans-Pecos within Texas.
I'll supplement this Journal entry with some of the more interesting images as they get uploaded.
Have fun with these!
