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Anita's Blog -- Continuations

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Leaf sheaves of fallen Mexican Fan Palm fronds. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)
Leaf sheaves of fallen Mexican Fan Palm fronds. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)

The two Texas Master Naturalist chapters, Rio Grande Valley chapter and South Texas Border chapter share a quarterly newsletter.


This blog post starts with a “more of the story” from an article I wrote for the winter issue of The Chachalaca. You may want to check out page five at the link below for perspective for this first item:


Brief recap: a volunteer Serjania brachycarpa appeared in our yard in 2023; common name is littlefruit slipplejack, locally called serjania. It’s in the Soapberry Family, Sapindaceae. It’s a vine.


By fall of 2024, the vine had devoured the tall Barbados cherry shrub that kindly lent it’s support to the previous year’s slender vine. Unbeknownst to me, (possibly because both vine and shrub leaves were of similar green color) during that second year the vine enveloped and overtopped the shrub, spread several feet onto our chain link fence and then travelled up, then onto and over the neighbor’s seven-foot-tall wooden fence whilst still spreading at each side. At that point, I thought it was interesting enough for The Chachalaca article.


Beyond The Chachalaca article: Our 2025 January two-day freeze event left the vine mostly burnt orange and brown colored and unsightly. Even in death, the vine was heavy, causing the Barbados cherry limbs to bend. Native experts advise us not to do much yard clean up at this time of year, nor is it wise to begin heavy pruning after a freeze on what may look like dead branches.


The theory is that the leaves may have succumbed to freezing temperatures, but the branches might still be alive and working on pushing out new leaves in the spring. So, do go cautiously into any garden cleanup for now. Another reason to not do garden clean up during fall and winter is because of all the insects that are sheltering, developing and wintering over in the lovely garden debris that, in turn, is breaking down and providing nutrients to the soil and plants.


After all that good advice and all, in deference of the neighbor’s fence and in defense of the Barbados cherry shrub, I pulled and tugged and clipped and practically dove into the shrub, eventually removing the dead, clinging, thigmotropic vegetation, thereby respecting the neighbor’s property and freeing the Barbados cherry.


Vine in bed of Gator. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)
Vine in bed of Gator. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)
Barbados Cherry free of vine. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)
Barbados Cherry free of vine. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)

For those who noticed my use of deference and defense in the above paragraph (and might question it) it’s a clue to our next TMN chapter meeting presentation. Our chapter president requested I present a mini workshop about writing at the next meeting of the South Texas Border Chapter, Monday, February 17. The chapter meets the third Monday of each month at 6 p.m. for a social; the presentation begins at 6:30 p.m. Meetings are at St. George Orthodox Church Hall, 704 West Sam Houston, in Pharr. Meetings are free and open to the public. Or request to join our notification list by e-mailing STxBorderTMN@gmail.com and you’ll be kept up to date with chapter information.


Some things do need cleaning up. It’s Texas; it’s windy. Although I love the wind, it can cause reckless havoc with palm tree skirts. The following view saddened me: an organized pile of downed palm fronds. I looked up and saw the skirt of the palm tree had been wiped out.

While not native, palm trees serve a lot of native wildlife.


Orderly downed Palm Fronds. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)
Orderly downed Palm Fronds. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)
Downed Palm Fronds. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)
Downed Palm Fronds. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)

At left, palm tree with short skirt; at right, minus skirt after wind event. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)
At left, palm tree with short skirt; at right, minus skirt after wind event. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)
Mexican Fan Palm with skirt, housing untold numbers of Mexican Yellow Bats. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)
Mexican Fan Palm with skirt, housing untold numbers of Mexican Yellow Bats. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)

The obvious native wildlife that use palm trees are birds and owls that use the crown for nesting, hiding, sheltering and as a lookout. Bugs live in the crown and on the stem, feeding warblers, kiskadees, woodpeckers, mockingbirds, and other birds, and lizards, and some mammals. The not so obvious occupants are bats; because they work in the dark, we don’t often see them. Bats live in palms, not in the crown but in the skirt, or beard; as palm trees grow more fronds, their old ones die, hang down but remain attached to the stem, which creates a skirt around the tree.


In South Texas, Southern yellow bats roost beneath the hanging dead fronds of palm trees year-round; conversely, the practice of removing those old palm fronds deprives these important insectivores of roosting space, according to online information from Texas Parks and Wildlife about the Southern yellow bat. Southern yellow bats in South Texas can eat about 1,200 insects per hour, or thousands of insects per night.


The most prevalent palm in the Rio Grande Valley is the Mexican fan palm, Washingtonia robusta. With the increasing numbers of ornamental palm trees being planted in South Texas, the article notes, these bats may actually be gaining roosts – when the skirts are allowed to remain intact.


Incidentally, sabal palms are native to the Rio Grande Valley. Google:  Sabal Palm, Sabal texana, or check out this Texas Parks and Wildlife link: https://tpwmagazine.com/archive/2019/oct/scout6_flora/index.phtml#:~:text=You've%20seen%20the%20majestic,in%20the%20early%2016th%20century.


Something new to pique my interest. A first for me. According to Texas Entomology, texasento.net, yellow-crescent blister beetle. It eats the blooms of mesquite trees and hopefully not my kale leaves, upon which I found it. I thought it was pretty so am sharing it with you.


Yellow-crescent Blister Beetle. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)
Yellow-crescent Blister Beetle. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)

As I was cleaning up things that couldn’t be ignored, I was rewarded with a tiny bright yellow bloom during my end-of-January dreary but pleasant winter Texas workday. A Mexican prickly poppy, Argemone Mexican. After years of planting seeds gathered along the road in back of our property, my attempts and anticipation came to fruition. The poppy is blooming at the edge of a red harvester ant circle that is interestingly ringed with a healthy crop of pink mint, Stachys drummondii.

Mexican Prickly Poppy. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)
Mexican Prickly Poppy. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)

Red harvester ants are the preferred diet of the Texas horny toad. When I find the above ground evidence of their nest, I leave it be. In a paper about red harvester ants, https://www-aes.tamu.edu/files/2014/06/Red-Harvester-Ants.pdf, it mentions “red harvester ant foragers collect seeds and dead insects and store them in the nests as food for the colony.” I suspect the ants collected the seeds of the yellow blooming prickly poppies I planted (and pink mint seeds) and brought them back to their nest and that’s how the Mexican poppy and the pink mint came to encircle their nest entrance. Well, you never know . . . .

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