Long live the Texas honey mesquite by Anita Westervelt, Texas Master Naturalist For artful creativity, you can’t do better than the honey mesquite, Prosopis glandulosa. With a history as big as Texas, this tree has a strong hold on our native landscape that has served beast and man through the years. Honey mesquite is one…

Be kind to the Valley’s habitat this Earth Day by Anita Westervelt, Texas Master Naturalist Design your own garden for hours of entertainment the rest of the year and help the native habitat. Clear a patch of ground, visit one of the Valley’s native plant nurseries and fill your freshly cleared area with native plants.…

Versatile, nutritious and beautiful, native Barbados cherry is a great landscape addition by Anita Westervelt, Texas Master Naturalist Bring some Caribbean flavor to your Valley garden with a Barbados cherry, Malpighia glabra. This densely-branched shrub has many names in the Caribbean, West Indies and South America. In Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr and Willacy counties, its northern…

The Texas spiny lizard, hiding in plain sight by Anita Westervelt, Texas Master Naturalist One quiet Sunday afternoon, the mesquite tree offered a strange silhouette. I did a double-take, sucked in my breath and realized I was about to capture, on camera, something I’d been after for months: the Texas Spiny Lizard, in its favorite…

Unique and rare native plants add excitement to Valley nature parks by Anita Westervelt, Texas Master Naturalist Extreme south Texas’ native habitat has some pretty unique plants that are not found elsewhere in the U.S. Mexican buttonbush, Cephalanthus salicifolius, is one such shrub that only grows on the banks of the Rio Grande in Cameron…

Fascination with Fasciation by Anita Westervelt, Texas Master Naturalist Fasciated is a weird word for a weird botanical condition. Pronounced făsh′ē-ā′tĭd, it is a rare, abnormal growth in vascular plants — plants that possess xylem (water-conducting tissue) and phloem (food-conducting tissue). In normal plant growth, the growing tip (commonly the flowering part) is normally concentrated…