Every spring, colorful carpets of wildflowers appear in fields and roadsides across the state. But this year may not yield quite as many bouquets as usual. The tumultuous weather of 2024—particularly the lack of fall rains—is likely to yield a distinctly patchy season for blooms, says Andrea DeLong-Amaya, director of horticulture at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin.
“If predicting the weather is a challenge, then predicting the wildflower bloom for a big state like Texas is even more of a challenge,” DeLong-Amaya says. “With fluctuations in weather and micro-climate scenarios (where one small geographical area may have received different weather than others), it’s sometimes hard to make a big sweeping prediction. This is one of those years.”
For East Texas, last year was consistently wet enough to yield healthy carpets of wildflowers, including favorites like anemones, buttercups, southern dewberry, Engelmann daisies, and Indian paintbrushes. “The rain is very important for getting the plants to germinate and grow, and to keep those plants alive,” DeLong-Amaya says. And while the Interstate 35 corridor had a dry fall, she adds, the winter and early spring have brought enough rain to coax out some blooms. “We’re going to have a decent spring in the Austin area but not a spectacular one.”
The late-year droughts in the Edwards Plateau and Trans Pecos regions, however, are making for a more sparse year, with early bloomers like the beloved Texas bluebonnets and Texas paintbrush likely to make relatively poor showings. While the past few weeks have brought enough rain to allow existing plants to bloom, DeLong-Amaya says, it’s likely too late in the year for new seeds to successfully sprout, dealing a blow to overall plant numbers.
Still, if the spring manages to be wet enough, the lower number of spring plants could leave more room for summer wildflowers like firewheel or purple horsemint, especially if we’re lucky enough to have a relatively mild summer.
“If we continue having decent, well-spaced rains for the next month or so, we might have a really good spring for things like the Mexican hat, sunflowers, and black-eyed Susans. It’s all going to depend on having consistent rains, though,” DeLong-Amaya says.
“Unfortunately,” she adds, “hotter and drier seems to be the pattern these days.” The NOAA forecast for the next three months suggests we’re in for a crispy late spring and summer, though circumstances can change quickly depending on the temperatures and levels of rain. As with last year, the winter and spring rains have been about average, and the summer seems likely to be brutal, which will exact a nasty toll on any blooms. “If we get dried out, everything will come to a screeching halt.”
Not all is lost, Delong-Amaya says. While annuals like bluebonnets—which need to reseed every year—may be having a rough time of it, perennial flowers such as mealy blue sage have longer taproots that allow them to reach deeper into the soil after moisture, which helps them weather the heat. “Even if the early spring annuals aren’t going to be quite as spectacular, we can still look forward to hopefully having a good later season show,” she says.
For help figuring out specific species’ growing schedules—or to see wildflowers thriving with the benefit of extra care and lots of irrigation—visit the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center’s website or campus in South Austin.
