Texas, My Texas: Musings of the Rambling Boy

52. TOO MANY BLUEBONNETS

+$2+ TOO MANY BLUEBONNETS SE V ERAL WEEKS AGO I wrote about some of Texas's fifty-five official state symbols, and I said that the bluebonnet, our state flower, had so many permutations and that its history was so complex that it deserved an essay of its own. This is that essay. First off, I have to correct a statement that I made in the earlier piece. My friend Joe Cole of Weatherford has pointed out that even though I wrote that "every Texan knows" that it is against the law to pick bluebonnets on the highway right-of-way, there is in fact no such law, and every spring both the Texas Deparhnent of Transportation and the Department of Public Safety put out press releases to that effect, at the same time cautioning motorists not to block traffic or damage the right-of-way. So pick all the bluebonnets that you want, but be careful while you are doing it. The designation of the bluebonnet as our state flower by the Texas legislature in 1901 came about as a result of an action taken by the National Congress of Women, held in C hicago in 1893 as part of the World's Columbian Exposition. The congress was not a frivolous affair. The delegates included Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances E. Willard, and Julia Ward Howe, and their discussions ranged over subjects as serious as divorce reform, equal pay for equal work, philanthropy, education, and civil law. But at some point they also discussed flowers, and a resolution was passed proposing a National Garland of Flowers, with each state legislature choosing a flower to represent its state in the garland. The task of persuading the legislatures to act was given to a woman's group in each state. In Texas that job fell to the National Society of Colonial Dames of America's Texas branch, and the ladies settled on the bluebonnet as a suitable representative flower. The Colonial Dames took their recommendation to the 1901 legislature, and a debate ensued on the floor of the House of Representatives. Some members had their own ideas about a state flower. Philip Clement of Mills County proposed the cotton blossom , in honor of the state's major crop (he called it "the white rose of commerce"). John Nance Garner of Uvalde proposed the prickly pear, securing for himself the sobriquet Cactus Jack. Finally John Green of Cuero rose to defend the bluebonnet, and at the climactic moment of his speech, a group of ladies brought in a painting by Mode Walker of bluebonnets arranged in a vase and placed it on an easel on the House floor. According to Jean Andrews's informative little book, The Texas Bluebonnet (University of Texas Press, 1980), the house broke into thunderous applause and the bluebonnet won hands down. There was just one problem. The resolution naming the bluebonnet as the state flower used the scientific nomenclature Lupinus subcamosus to describe it, but there are actually five other varieties of bluebonnets that grow in Texas, of which Lllpinus texensis is generally agreed to be the bluest. For years, whenever the legislature had nothing better to do, some pedantic legislator would raise this point. Finally, in 1971, a resolution was passed including Lllpinus texensis "and any other variety of bluebonnet not heretofore recorded" in the designation. So Texas actually has six state flowers, including our own Big Bend bluebonnets (Lupinus havardii), which some years grow so tall that they look like gladiolas. But that is by no means the end of the bluebonnet story. In 1929 the legislature adopted "Texas, Our Texas," the winner of a statewide contest, as the state song. Four years later, in 1933, Julia Booth and her piano teacher, Lora Crockett, both of Chappell Hill, Texas, came forward with a second state song, entitled "Bluebonnets," which they asked the legislature to adopt on the grounds that "Texas, Our Texas" did not mention bluebonnets. Their song certainly does. It begins, When the pastures are gTeen in the springtime I And the birds are singing their sonnets I You may look at the hills and the valleys I And they're covered with lovely bluebonnets. The ladies came to Austin with a soloist, Alice Routt, who performed the song at the state capitol, and the lawmakers tactfully passed a joint resolution proclaiming it the official state flower song of Texas...