Good Things from January 2026

A brief list of delights.

• Hercules' Club (Zanthoxylum clava-herculis)

  

  

  

  My husband, son, and I went for a hike at Stephen F. Austin State Park in San Felipe yesterday afternoon. It was quite chilly and I don’t like being cold so I was bundled up in several layers. However, the sun was out and the light was fantastic and despite the cold it was a gorgeous day to be outside. I’m still slightly burnt out from hiking in the Big Thicket right now so it was a delight to be in a different habitat, one that had a lot of Hercules’ club trees on the landscape. Their distinctive bark makes them easy to identify, though, there were also a lot of sugar hackberries (Celtis laevigata) at this state park and they also have growths on their trunks, however they are more warty and less sharp than Hercules’ club trees. Still, both sometimes resemble each other in less mature trees and can trip up those who aren’t as familiar with either plant.

• Common Script Lichen (Graphis scripta)

  

  I have been trying to get into lichens the last few months, well, in reality for a lot longer than that. Winter’s lack of vascular plant blooms make looking for non-vascular plants and fungal/algae/cyanobacteria symbiotic relationships like lichens much more interesting right now. Unfortunately, I’m not very great at identifying a lot of them yet because regional books are scarce and I’m generally too lazy to look at things under a microscope (mosses and liverworts). But I’m still out there taking photos of lichens and uploading them to iNaturalist in hopes I will eventually get around to identifying them correctly. One that I do recognize pretty well these days is common script lichen. Sometimes I don’t realize what it is until I’m up close taking a photo with my phone and then I’m delighted to realize how much of it is covering the particular tree I’m looking at. I find it hard not to stop by trees now when I see anything growing on them because you’ll quickly find a lot of different species growing on their trunks!

• Bald Eagles! Sound on for bald eagle and great white egret vocalizations.

• Swamp Azalea (Rhododendron viscosum)

  

  I’m not sure this is a totally a good thing given that these were blooming 4-5 months out of their typical season, but it was really nice to see swamp azaleas blooming at the Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve a few weekends ago when we were having a work day. And speaking of WRNPP, I have recently taken over as editor of the newsletter for the Preserve and you can subscribe to it here if you’d like to keep up on what is happening there!

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I would love to hear what is keeping you going as we kick off February. Share your delights from January whether they be books, music, plants, wildlife…let me know!

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