Loaded Pistil

Stories about Plants & People... by a horticultured journalist

03/10/2025

While crowds of Houstonians filtered into for the Sunday, the familiar sounds of mic checks filled the brisk air and I swole with memories. My incredibly intelligent and talented colleagues and Laura Webb had the first shift at our ‘Expert booth’- so I spent the morning assessing spaces I steward. The beamed with new growth and emerging blooms. Carolina grasswort, Creeping burhead, Texas Water Canna, Soft stemmed bulrush, Texas Spiderlilies, Mexican water lilies, Southern blue flag Iris & ‘Zig Zag’ Irises, Spartinas, and Shoreline sedge were just some of the unsung hydrophytes on the ‘wayside-show stage’ keeping time behind the scenes.

01/26/2025

Notes from Loaded Pistil’s Editor:
Yesterday I taught a class about native seed collection and propagation at where I am one of five horticulturists and the only one solely focused on natural spaces and conservation. The 1.5 hours long class was enlightening… inspiring! Nearly every attendee was there at the beginning of their gardening experience and wanting to start things off ‘right’ by planting natives in their yard! Friends who have been or are currently co-workers of mine supported me in tremendous fashion and helped me plant seeds of what so hope becomes a lifelong love affair between Houstonions and our incredible native flora!! A mere post cannot convey the amount of hope this reignited for me! Thank you and everyone at and a big thanks to those who showed up for the class!!!

08/31/2024

A double rainbow arched over Galveston Bay Friday evening, drawing San Leon residents to the shoreline.

08/25/2024

Bacopa monnieri
Water hyssop is a sweet and powerful siren of a plant. Underfoot and underrated, she’s made her way around the globe and calls Texas one of her homes. She sprawls out in Gulf Coast sands and marshlands with ease, dropping nodes like notes of a Bach on a honky-tonk piano to compose a green canvas from which fellow hydrophytes emerge like pilings - bars of measurement anchored deep in the clay (an enchanting composition in its own right).
Subtle, supportive, low maintenance, and downright medicinal, Water hyssop is said to calibrate cognition and enhance memory. In Aryuvedic medicine, the perennial wild herb is referred to as Brahmi and has indeed been used as a nootropic as well as to treat anxiety, depression, insanity, and other such human experiences. This is due to the arsenal of saponins known as bacosides and bacoposides.
Highly adaptable, she can tolerate alkaline and acidic soils alike and doesn’t mind a bit of saltiness. Sometimes called the ‘Herb of Grace’ , this member of the figwort family brightens up a wet space with delicate white actinomorphic flowers. While playing host larval of White Peacock butterflies and soothing insane humans, this demur powerhouse has her work cut out for her!! Let her grow where she wants. Lord knows we got a whole lot crazy to cure!!

03/22/2024

Iris virginica, Southern Blue Flag is a native to the wet southern United States. Often spotted in mudbug ditches, bayou edges, marshy spots of cattle ranches, and those places where pinholes permit sunlight to pe*****te the deep swamps, this beautiful speciman puts the blue in bayou. Like a siren dancing gracefully in a Cajun kitchen despite having sea-legs, she is simultaneously anchored while maintaining freedom to sway with coastal winds throughout centuries. But Iris virginica is not a Louisiana Iris per se. It is part of the same Iridaceae family and is indeed a non bearded iris but is a sub clade of a sub clade if that makes since? The perennial facultative wetland beauty prefers soils with a pH of 6.0 or slightly less… not uncommon for gumbo dwellers really. Still, these voodoo hoodoos can hang in nearly any situation and put on a show in late spring. The blue to violet 6 ray flowers boast 3 outer falls with white marks and yellow crests coming off the 3 more erect blue inner standards atop a naked stem that rises from strappy lanceolate leaves possessing distinct midribs even as they bend toward the water. After the show is over, capsule fruit packed full of hard half moon shaped seeds form enduring a continuation of the tough breed. As with any alluring creature, there’s a fine line between medicinal and lethal due to roots(rhizomes), sap, and seeds containing irisin, iridin, or irisin. Pollinators are drawn to the flower signals and pheromones triggered while horses and cattle instinctively graze way around them.

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