The tough, useful plants of the dry uplands — agarita, Texas persimmon, prickly pear, sotol — and how they're built for the opposite world from the pampered canyon maples.
Walking the high, dry ground, get to know the tough little plants that scratch out a living up here — because the Hill Country understory is full of survivors, and a few of them will even feed you. That low, holly-looking shrub with the stiff, spiny gray-green leaves is agarita; its tart red berries make a wonderful jelly, and folks harvest them by beating the bush over a spread sheet, since you'd never grab those prickly branches bare-handed.
The small trees with the smooth dark bark are Texas persimmons, and the wildlife love their little black fruits. There's prickly pear cactus, whose pads and red fruit are both good eating once you get the spines off, and tall dried stalks of sotol standing like spears. Every one of these plants is built to thrive on thin soil, blazing sun, and hardly any water — the exact opposite of the pampered maples down in their shady canyon. Up here is a whole other way to be a plant in this country. Keep on along the trail; it's swinging back down toward the canyon now.
Photo: MrPanyGoff · CC BY-SA 3.0
