West Texas Botanizing

I have barely begun to organize and identify thousands of plant images from my early June jaunt to West Texas. I thought I'd upload this one as a starting point as a teaser.

Fendler's Ceanothus is apparently known in Texas only from a handful of plants in the higher elevations of the Trans-Pecos. This shrub was photographed on a hillside in Tobe Canyon at about 7000 ft, on TNC's Davis Mountains Preserve. It is definitely a pollinator magnet with many bees, flies, beetles, and a few butterflies on the shrub.
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/3445031

p.s. I was never able to get a clear picture of that interesting little black and red beetle in the background!

This is certainly one of the more interesting finds on this hike. This clump was growing out of a nearly vertical basalt wall near the base of Baldy Peak on Mt. Livermore. Within Texas, this is only known from the Davis Mountains.

For further details on this species, see: J. M. Poole et al. 2007. Rare Plants of Texas, p. 182-183. Texas A&M Press.

We saw a few clusters of this species on rocky ravines at mid-elevations (about 6200 ft in this instance). The plants were just beginning to send up new flower stalks. I photographed the dry stalks from the previous year.

The oblique, oblong, often pointed thali are characteristic of this species of duckweed. Note also how several thali (6 to 8) are linked together, rather than just 2 or 3.
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/imgleva.htm
http://luirig.altervista.org/schedenam/fnam.php?taxon=Lemna+valdiviana

A patch of this distinctive ironweed was growing around a hillside spring at about 5000 ft. elevation. While all the leaves were very narrow, note the variation in narrowness in two of the clusters (last two images).

Wright'™s dutchman€'s pipe, Wright'™s pipevine; Aristolochiaceae. Just a single cluster of this inconspicuous and interesting little flower was found around the rocky margin of a permanent reach of a stream; elev. about 4600 ft.

I almost overlooked this tiny pink flower in the wetlands along the stream bank. The plants are about 1 to 1-1/2 feet tall and the flowers are barely 4 mm long, on top of a fruit capsule that is 25 to 40 mm.