Home » Uncategories » What Animals and Plants Live in Texas

What Animals and Plants Live in Texas

Texas is the largest contiguous state of the union and figures equally large in the pop imagination. Animals and plants native to the state span marine mammals off the Gulf of Mexico declension to tortoises that live in the deserts westward of El Paso, from eagles soaring over the Texas Panhandle to agaves that cling to life in the parched desert around the valley of the Rio Grande. Of all these flora and fauna, information technology is vital to exist able to recognize the endangered and threatened species and important to know those that are emblematic of the Lone Star Country.

Endangered and Threatened Species

The Texas Department of Parks and Wild animals shows three species of bat as threatened and one equally endangered, 3 species of rodent every bit threatened, 13 species of marine mammal as threatened and one as endangered and four species of carnivore as threatened, with five listed as endangered. Endangered marine mammals include the finback whale (Balaenoptera physalus) and the Westward Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus). TPWD lists the the black bear (Ursus americanus), the Louisiana black bear (Ursus americanus luteolus), the white-nosed coati (Asua narica) and the margay (Leopardus wiedii) equally threatened mammals, and the blood-red wolf (Canis rufus), the grey wolf (Canis lupus), the ocelot (Leopardus pardalis), the jaguarundi (Herpailurus yaguarondi) and the jaguar (Panthera onca) equally endangered mammals.

Wildflowers in Texas

The mural of Texas in spring is an effectively incessant palette of colors and textures. Alone Star Internet lists 170 distinct flowers that alive wild in the state, including such evocatively named specimens as antelope horns, baby blue-optics, bastard cabbage, beaked corn salad, blackness-eyed Susan, branched broomrape, downy paintbrush, gayfeather, Indian blanket, skeleton weed and snow-on-the-prairie.

Texas Bluebonnets

From the rolling sands of littoral Texas, across the Hill Country and into the great plains of the westward, every spring a sprawling, excellent riot of royal blue graces the Lone Star State. The bluebonnet – whatsoever variety of Lupinus – is Texas' state bloom. The proper name is idea to derive from the bonnets worn by pioneer women having been manufactured in a similar shape to the petals of the flower. There are five species of bluebonnets recognized by the state legislature, and Texas is the simply place on earth the two predominant species grow naturally in the wild. Lady Bird Johnson, a native Texan and wife of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, passionately championed the tillage of the bluebonnet across the state.

Nine-Banded Armadillo

The 9-banded Armadillo, Dasypus novemcinctus, trundles beyond Texas and across the country'due south self-paradigm equally. Although they only arrived from Key America in the late 1800s, these charming, waddling creatures are intimately branded as a grapheme of the West – sadly non least considering of their propensity to die on the roads. They take extremely poor eyesight, which is compensated for in the wild by a keen sense of smell. Armadillos graduate in color betwixt a brownish-black to a mid gray, weigh in at betwixt 12 and 17 pounds and are almost entirely protected by a folding, jointed suit of armor plates.

Omnivores, they include grubs, spiders, earthworms, roots and berries in their natural diet, and are non at all balky to delving into garbage cans even in the largest urban environments; forth with possums they thrive in the middle of San Antonio, Houston and as far n as Dallas-Fort Worth. Aside from their trademark trunk armor, armadillos are also favorites with kids considering they can walk underwater: When they need to cross a river, rather than swim they make themselves sink and but march across the bottom to the other side. The armadillo has been the official Texas state mascot since 1981.

References

Resources

Writer Bio