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Kerr County, Texas; Interstate 10 eastbound rest area east of Kerrville
6/14/2023
Zeltnera calycosa

Common in rocky area closer to the interstate. Plants varying in robustness, ranging from 6-15cm tall. Usually single stemmed. Corolla lobes about 7-8mmx3mm, tubes about 10cm and calyces about 9mm. Cauline leaves on more robust plants about 15mmx3mm.

Plants appeared common on the edge of I10 from Kerrville east to the rest area. There did not appear to be any in the main, mowed part of the rest area.

B.L. Turner once made a collection of this species (93-107,TEX) from Crockett county in 1993 where he mentioned seeing this species "carpeting the road shoulders on all sides from ca. 10 mi W of Sheffield to Fredricksburg...the pinks nearly always confined to bare limestone shoulders, rarely in adj. fields." Someone pencilled in "Planted" next to the this part of the text. My observation of these is similar to Turner's, at least for this smaller stretch of I10. I don't know if they were planted as someone pencilled in, but they certainly seem to have an affinity to the I10 road shoulders in this area. This seemed ironic after I spent a number of hours in various park settings around Kerrville in the same time period and found only a handful of very small specimens in one spot (Singing Wind Park). I had thought that perhaps this was due to drought, but after seeing the abundance along the interstate, I am not so sure.

Zeltnera calycosa appears to be a difficult species to define. After spending a fair amount of time in the spring researching the species in an attempt to be able to differentiate from it other species in central Texas such as Z. texensis and Z. beyrichii, it seems difficult to come up with a definition that occurs in all cases. Robust specimens like this are often mistaken (understandably) for Z. beyrichii and smaller flowered specimens seem to grade into Z. texensis with perhaps only minimal differences in size. Just about every time I thought I found some feature which would truly distinguish it from these others, I seemed to find an exception. Maybe future research will be more fruitful.