Posted: Sun, 27 Mar 2016 09:31 PM - 16,560 Readers

By: Denise Gamino

Another Texas bluebonnet spring has sprung, but it may have a problem with its birth certificate.

The 2016 bluebonnet season actually began in 2015. In Austin, the brilliant blue state flower appeared in some sunny spots even before Christmas. The flowers popped open so early in one city park near downtown that an inattentive worker mowed them down shortly after they bloomed in December, though they grew back — in abundance.

The precocious blooms signaled that the 2016 crop of bluebonnets and other wildflowers is in excellent shape in most spots around Central Texas.

The wildflowers are a gift of a mild winter and record rains.

Almost 60 inches of rain fell in Austin last year, the most since 1919. And winter brought no hard freeze — at least in Central Austin. The devastating floods that damaged Central Texas over Memorial Day weekend and then again over Halloween weekend did not harm most wildflower germination, according to reports from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in far South Austin.



The Halloween weekend flooding came just before bluebonnets and other spring flowers begin to germinate, said says Andrea DeLong-Amaya, director of horticulture at the Wildflower Center, which is part of the University of Texas at Austin. “So all the flooding was pretty much over by time they were really getting going,” she says. “We had good rains in the fall and early winter. That was really the important part, really getting good, well-spaced rain while the plants were trying to germinate.”

But the water-water-everywhere episodes caused by the El Niño weather pattern mean fewer flowers in some popular areas.

The improbably massive and magnificent sea of bluebonnets that appeared in the last few years at a spot along the north end of Lake Travis is a thing of the past. The Lower Colorado River Authority’s Muleshoe Bend Recreation Area had an epic bluebonnet bonanza in 2014 and 2015 in a low area exposed by years of intense drought.



Now, Lake Travis is full for the first time since 2010, and the LCRA’s so-called Field of Dreams is under water. This year, only patches of bluebonnets hug the lake’s shore at Muleshoe Bend. Many of them appear in need of personal flotation devices — right next to them are less fortunate flowers that now swim beneath the surface of the lake like scuba divers.

You can still see last year’s Muleshoe Bend bluebonnets in Christopher Sherman’s YouTube video called “A Billion Bluebonnets?” showing a panoramic view of the blooms captured by an airborne camera.

Elsewhere in Central Texas this year, the bluebonnets, pink evening primrose and red Indian paintbrush are having a field day. In some spots, the yellow-and-red Indian blanket, or Gaillardia pulchella, is showing up as pretty pinwheel flair among the other flowers.

With such a generous showing of wildflowers, be careful on the roads. Expect to see plenty of families wearing Easter outfits and posing in their favorite roadside bouquets.

Perhaps they shouldn’t dally. Wildflower Center experts expect the warm temperatures and rain this month to extend the spring wildflower season, but one drawback to a warm and wet spring is that the weather promotes excellent growth in grasses and weeds such as bastard cabbage, which grows several feet tall and is topped by small yellow flowers. It’s as easy to spot as bluebonnets along roads and highways. Weeds already have overtaken some of the bluebonnet fields. It may be a race to the finish.

Texans know all about the fleeting beauty of peak-period bluebonnets.

Others are not so schooled in the life cycle of the Texas state flower. All year long, DeLong-Amaya must explain to Wildflower Center visitors and people calling for advice on Texas travel that the bluebonnets are in bloom only at this very special time of the year.

Still, tourists walk into the Wildflower Center every August and ask, “Where are the bluebonnets?”

*  Story Contributed by: Denise Gamino