Roadside Botany and Decrepit Service Stations
Two weekends ago Sadaf and I went up to Ennis in hopes of going to the Ennis Bluebonnet Festival and perhaps driving the back roads to admire the endless fields of bluebonnets that Ennis is so well known for. Unfortunately, Saturday was incredibly rainy, prompting the bluebonnet festival to be cancelled, so instead, we went over to Waxahachie to walk around downtown and visit the shops. It gave me a chance to photograph the Ennis County Courthouse again, which amidst a brief break in the rain, was adorned with a lovely diffused light courtesy of the rain clouds. This kind of light is always my favorite to photograph in, and in this case, I think the soft light really accentuates the variety of colors and textures in the stone that makes up the courthouse. The oak trees surrounding the courthouse, with their fresh flush of leaves, looked their most verdant and really completed the scene.
The rain and cold on Saturday gave way to mild temperatures and sunshine on Sunday. Sadaf and I left Ennis, heading back home to Bryan around lunch time, opting to leave a little earlier than we normally would so that we could make a few stops along the way. Always opting to ditch the interstate whenever possible, my preferred route between Dallas and Bryan takes me down Highway 14, through small towns with historic buildings lining quiet brick paved streets and past fields dotted with cows and—at this time of year—painted with the colorful hues of spring wildflowers.
Passing through Mexia, an island of fuchsia amidst an undulating sea of grass caught my eye. I didn’t immediately recognize the species, so I stopped to investigate. After wading through about twenty yards of thigh high grass, I made it to the isolated patch of plants and immediately recognized they were an iris of some type. I put an observation up on iNaturalist and confirmed that it was eastern gladiolus (Gladiolus communis), an introduced species from Europe and north Africa. There is another observation of the species southwest of Marlin, but besides that, mine is the only observation of the species on iNaturalist between Dallas and Houston.
It worked out perfectly that the Gladiolus were where they were because it happened to be next to an old gas station that I’ve been wanting to photograph. If there ever was a store associated with this gas station, it is long gone. All that remains is the awning and deteriorating remnants of the fuel pumps. Tarps, serving some unknown purpose, had come unloose and were whipping in the wind while grass erupted through cracks in the concrete, and the empty threat of a no parking sign watched over it all. I really appreciate how the fuel auspiciously touts itself as the formula of the future all while standing over the skeletal remains of gas pumps, while the message itself slowly suffers at the hands of neglect and decay, a message for the future slowly slipping into the immutable past.
The one stop I knew I wanted to make on this day was at Fort Parker State Park between Mexia and Groesbeck. Here, back in June of 1993, one my favorite plants, Sedum pulchellum, an adorable succulent with white to pink flowers arranged like the arms of a starfish, was collected on a limestone outcrop near the park’s entrance. I always keep my eyes peeled for the species when I drive past, but on this day, I decided to finally stop and look around for it. Despite scouring the roadside for the better part of an hour, I was unable to locate any Sedums, despite finding several spots where the conditions were apparently suitable: limestone outcrops covered by a thin layer of moist soil. While it was a bummer not to find any Sedums, I am hopeful that since there are seemingly suitable sites on the roadside, there may be other suitable sites in the area that still have plants.
While we didn’t find any Sedums we found lots of other neat plants that were worthy of admiration. The roadside near the entrance to Fort Parker State Park was dotted with the blood red flowers of Phlox drummondii. While this species is fairly common in this part of the state, I have only ever seen it with bright pink to purple flowers, so finding this population with such a deep red flower color was really neat.
Besides the red Phlox, the roadsides were also adorned with Hymenopappus, a relative of sunflowers, whose cream colored composite flowers towered above the rest of the roadside wildflowers.
While most of the bluebonnets have gone to seed at this point, we were still able to find a few plants flowering, though even they appeared to be past their prime.
We also happened across one of my favorite roadside wildflowers: the white prickly poppy. There are several species in Texas, but I have tentatively identified this one as Argemone albiflora. I really love how robust and beefy this plant is and how the delicate appearance of the flowers contrasts with the prickly hostility of the plant’s foliage.
Having resigned ourselves to the fate that the Sedums would not be found that day, we continued on towards Bryan. When we passed through the small town of Kosse, I noticed that the awning of the old service station had collapsed. I seemed to remember it still standing when we went up to Ennis a few days prior, so I figured the awning must have fallen down in the storms of the previous night. I have been observing this service station since 2020 and have stopped to photograph it several times. I don’t remember if the awning was cracked when I first started passing by it, but I know that the crack has gotten progressively worse with each passing year. It seemed like each time I passed by this service station, the awning was bowing further and further but still refusing to collapse. At last, the awning met its match with this latest round of storms. For a building with such history, it was an honor to photograph it through its many states and to be there to document the awning’s demise before someone came by to clean up the pieces.
The old service station in Kosse, photographed back in August of 2021. The awning, though still intact, was bowing considerably.
