I’ve been on a family vacation to the Corpus Christi, Texas area this week.  It’s been a great week, with pleasant weather and lots of beach exploration.  I’ll have more photos to share next week, but today wanted to share a plant that I very much enjoyed photographing down here.

Railroad vine in bloom at Padre Island National Seashore, Texas.

Railroad vine, or beach morning glory (Ipomoea pes-caprae) is a native vine that sprawls across many of the dunes along the beaches of the Gulf Coast of Texas.  Although it is in the same plant family as the bindweed I’m fighting in my home garden, it wasn’t hard to appreciate its color and character.

We spent Thursday at San Jose Island, just north of Port Aransas, Texas.  Railroad vine was common on the beach dunes there as well.  Also abundant on those dunes were grasshoppers of many colorful species.  The two interacted in at least some cases, with the grasshoppers feeding on the flowers of the vine.

Grasshopper feeding on railroad vine flowers. San Jose Island, Texas.

It turns out that photography (at least for me) along the beaches of the Texas Gulf Coast is much like it is in the prairies of Nebraska.  I walk through the vegetation and appreciate the scenery, but mostly focus in on the small creatures (like grasshoppers) living there.  More on that next week…