Texas Mountain Laurel

Last week when I went to mail a letter at the outside mailbox at the Wimberley Post Office I was stunned to see a beautiful blooming Texas Mountain Laurel (Sophora secundiflora) in front of me. Other names for the Texas Mountain Laurel are Mescal Bean and Frijolito. I hope you have taken the time to smell the bluish purple flowers. I think they smell like grape bubblegum. When the pollinators fertilize the flowers they make a unique hard pod characteristic of plants in the legume, or pea family. Inside the hard pods are poisonous bright red seeds.

One way to propagate the native Texas Mountain Laurels is to throw the red seeds on bare ground and rub them into the ground with your shoe. I need to warn you that when you plant seeds in this fashion they will germinate and come up but it will be years before you will have a plant big enough to make flowers. They grow as an understory tree or shrub in the shade and also out in full sun.

Genista Moth Caterpillar larvae feed on the Texas Mountain Laurel. Check your plants in the spring as these caterpillars will ruin your future flowers. I have a friend who cuts these caterpillars in half when she finds them! I usually trim the loose webbing these caterpillars make out of my shrubs and throw it in the trash.

Last month I wrote an article that included the Anacacho Orchid tree. I said it was not native but I stand corrected. Dell Hood, who volunteers regularly at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin wrote: There are something like 185 species in the Bauhinia genus with many of them Asian, but the species lunaroides is native to a small area in West Texas and adjacent parts of Mexico. The Wildflower Center’s plant database, the Native Plant Society of Texas, Texas A&M, USDA, all affirm it is native.

Enjoy our spring as this promises to be a spectacular one.