Texas Natives – October, 2007

Kidneywood
(Eysenhardtia texana)

Summer is here, and while temperatures are still climbing, kidneywood is defying the extreme weather with spikes of white, delicately fragrant flowers. A semi-deciduous shrub from 8 to 12 feet tall, kidneywood (Eysenhardtia texana) grows in sunny slopes and canyons from Texas to northeastern Mexico. Flowers appear intermittently from summer through fall, attracting bees, butterflies and assorted insect pollinators. Kidneywood is very drought-tolerant — a tough native plant that helps keep the water bill low.

For more on this plant, and to see what’s happening at Texas Discovery Gardens this month, go to

http://www.texasdiscoverygardens.org/texasnatives.htm

About the author: Tina Dombrowski is the Director of Horticulture at Texas Discovery Gardens at Fair Park, Dallas. She has a particular interest in Texas native plants, butterflies, pollinating insects and their interconnected histories.