Texas Trails: Texas and the Bluebonnet
By CLAY COPPEDGE, Country World staff writer
April 3, 2008 - Depending on how taxonomically correct you want to be, you could say that Texas has at least five state flowers and all of them are bluebonnets. That is the result of a drawn-out legislative process that, for 70 years, included some bluebonnets in its designation, but not all of them.
The Colonial Dames of Texas pushed the state Legislature to adopt the bluebonnet as the official state flower in 1901 but met with immediate opposition. What had seemed like an innocuous legislative formality brought forth dissent from John Nance Garner, of Uvalde, among others. Garner, who would later serve as Vice-President under Franklin Roosevelt, was passionate and articulate in boosting his choice for the state flower, the prickly pear bloom. He was thereafter known as "Cactus Jack" and the name stuck.
Another group wanted to adopt the open cotton boll as the "white flower of commerce."
For a time it looked like the bluebonnet's future as a floral symbol of Texas might be doomed, but a painting of a field of bluebonnets by Modie Walker of Austin, presented by the Dames in support of their flower, swayed the opposition and the bluebonnets won the day.
Or so it seemed. As hard as it may be to imagine, people actually accused the state legislature of making a mistake; the darn fools picked the wrong bluebonnet.
The flower named in the 1901 resolution was the species of bluebonnet classified as Lupinus subcarnosus, commonly referred to in those days as buffalo clover because it was thought that buffalo ate the plant. Like their bovine successors, buffalo actually don't care much for bluebonnets but sheep and goats will eat them 'till the cows come home.'
Botanists, florists and people who just plain knew their wildflowers, insisted the resolution should have specified the Lupinus texensis, or Texas bluebonnet. It's hard to find fault with their belief that a species named for the state is the logical and correct choice for the state flower.
Since the adoption of the state flower is something of a beauty contest, opponents to the wording of the original legislation insisted that Lupinus subcarnosus is not nearly as pretty as the Texas bluebonnet, the one that carpets fields throughout most of Texas every spring.
Seventy years after the state legislature's original choice, the 1971 legislature amended the adoption to include the Texas bluebonnet and "any other varieties of Bluebonnet not heretofore recorded."
The legislators might have thought they had settled the matter, but only because they didn't know or didn't care that we have at least three other species of bluebonnets in the state. People from East or Central Texas would recognize a species known commonly as the Big Bend or Chisos bluebonnet as the state flower but they might think it was on some kind of botanical steroids; it grows three to four feet high and has flowers of deep blue with a lemon blotch. It stays put in the Trans-Pecos region and doesn't care to grow wild or cultivated anywhere else.
Another variety, with the common name of Bajada bluebonnet doesn't look much like a bluebonnet at all. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center describes it as "a somewhat sprawling lupine."
In the Panhandle, Lupinus lattensis is known as the Plains bluebonnet or Nebraska bluebonnet. It's not as showy as the Texas bluebonnet and grows to be about two feet tall. But it's still a bluebonnet.
People used to call the bluebonnet a '"wolf flower" instead of a wildflower because it was believed that bluebonnets robbed the soil the same way a wolf robs a flock of sheep. Once the question was put to a test it was discovered that bluebonnets actually benefit the soil by adding nitrogen. Legislators can be glad the bluebonnet wasn't found to be obnoxious or invasive. No one likes that in a state flower. Something would have to be done.
As it is, the Texas bluebonnet is vigorously supported by the highway department, which plants them along Texas roadsides, and garden clubs, which plant them everywhere they can. Businesses, historical societies, and organizations use 'bluebonnet" in their name to identify the enterprise as being Texas-related.
"It's not only the state flower but also kind of a floral trademark almost as well known to outsiders as cowboy boots and the Stetson hat," long-time Texas columnist and author Jack Maguire once wrote. "The bluebonnet is to Texas what the shamrock is to Ireland, the cherry blossom to Japan, the lily to France, the rose to England, and tulip to Holland."
Besides, it's hard to imagine generations of Texas families sitting their babies in a field of prickly pear or the middle of a cotton field to pose for an obligatory springtime picture. We have bluebonnets for that because the state flower of Texas by any other name would still be a bluebonnet, regardless of what kind of bluebonnet it might happen to be.
