PRAIRIE ONION CROW POISON
Prairie Onion (Allium nuttallii) has short flower stalks 4-6 inches high growing from a very small bulb which has a brown, finely-woven outer coat. The flowers are nearly half an inch broad and vary from pale pink to a deep rose. Allium is the Latin for “garlic,” and both the cultivated garlic and onion are members of this group. There are nearly twenty different wild onions in the state, many of which make lovely garden plants. Allium mutabile, a taller onion with very numerous white flowers, blooms in May. The prairie onion is the same as Heller’s onion (Allium helleri) and blooms in April.
Crow Poison. False Garlic (Nothoscordum bivalve) is one of the first flowers to appear in the spring on lawns, meadows, and roadsides throughout the Southern States and may bloom again in the autumn. It looks very much like the onions, but has fewer, larger flowers on long stalks and does not have the onion odor. It grows from an onion-like bulb. The name is from the Greek meaning “false garlic.”
FINE-LEAVED TREE-YUCCA SOAPWEED
Beargrass. Fine-Leaved Tree-Yucca (Yucca elata) belongs to a group widely represented in Texas by many different forms, those with thin thready leaves being known as beargrass, soapweed, “palmillo,” and Adam’s needle and those with thick, stiff, sharp-pointed leaves as Spanish bayonet or dagger. All have creamy or greenish-white bell-shaped drooping flowers borne in dense clusters on a long stalk growing out of a rosette of leaves. The fine-leaved tree-yucca sometimes grows 20 ft. high and is very abundant west of the Pecos River to Arizona. The budding flower stalk is quite tender and palatable and was often used as a food by early settlers. It is an excellent food for cattle, and they keep the stalks stripped of budding shoots, making the absence of seed pods quite conspicuous on the cattle ranges. Indians used the leaf fibers for making sandals.
Soapweed (Yucca glauca), the common yucca of the Panhandle of Texas and adjacent states, has an unbranched flower stalk. As in other yuccas, the roots yield soap when the bark is removed and crushed in water. The fruits of the stiff-leaved tree-yuccas are edible.
AMARYLLIS FAMILY (Amaryllidaceae)
SMALL RAIN LILY GIANT RAIN LILY