Texas’ native buckeyes unleash their exotic hybrid flowers along Salado Creek for a festival of red, pink and yellow.
We’re not seeing many wildflowers this year due to the persistent drought. But there’s one or two who didn’t get the memo — and they’re in full bloom right now.
It’s a unique natural phenomenon that happens every March along San Antonio’s Salado Creek greenway trail, creating a spectrum of fascinating color combinations.
The two species are both native buckeyes that share many features, including palm-like leaves and, most noticeably, large seed pods with a characteristic white spot or “buckeye.”
Texas buckeye is a lovely small tree that boasts showy butter-yellow flower clusters in early spring. Red buckeye is more of a large shrub with striking deep red flower clusters in spring. Its bell-shaped flowers are tubular with long filaments and several flowers bloom at once on their six- to 10-inch stems.
The big difference between the two is that they have such different geographic ranges. Red buckeye is found from the easternmost part of the Edwards Plateau, and all the way from East Texas to North Carolina and as far north as Illinois. Yellow-flowering Texas buckeye occurs in only a few central Texas counties, along the western Edwards Plateau.
And one of few places where the two species overlap is between Walker Ranch Park and Hardberger Park, a wondrous walk where you can see them mix and mingle.
On a spring day, you can observe they get along quite well, combining into a variety of flowering hybrids in many combinations of yellow and red. You’ll spy pale butter-yellow outer petals with cherry red streaks inside, and pinkish-red buds popping open with bright yellow petals and red stamens. The color possibilities seem infinite. (Strawberry lemonade comes to mind.)
Both buckeyes drop their leaves with the extreme heat of summer and remain bare until the next year. This means that from mid-summer to late February, you may not even notice they’re there.
But when they burst into life every March, the month-long show is worthy of an annual stroll along the Salado Creek Greenway to see these exclusive hybrids in their array of candy store hues.
Rather than wax on about all the quaint combinations, let’s explore some photographic examples from a recent spring day!
