The BLUEBONNETS of Texas ~This shot came from a trip to San Angelo, Texas, where we went to celebrate my wife's aunt's 100 th. Birthday. Having always been a Californian, I never knew what bluebonnets were. Or the fact that they have been loved since man first trod the vast prairies of Texas. Indians wove fascinating folk tales around them.
The early-day Spanish priests gathered the seeds and grew them around their missions. This practice gave rise to the myth that the padres had brought the plant from Spain, but this cannot be true since the two predominant species of bluebonnets are found growing naturally only in Texas and at no other location in the world. As historian Jack Maguire so aptly wrote, "It's not only the state flower but also a kind of floral trademark almost as well known to outsiders as cowboy boots and the Stetson hat." He goes on to affirm that "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 the tulip to Holland."
Texas actually has five state flowers, more or less, and they are all bluebonnets. The five colors of the Blue Bonnets are: White, Pink, Maroon, Blue and Red. I think you can see a few of each of these in the picture here. Technically, the other colors are called things like White Bluebonnets, but they just call the blue ones bluebonnets. Whatever they call them, they are just a lovely sight growing wild on the prairies of Texas.
"A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in." ~ Robert Orben
