Snow on the Prairie

About the Snow on the Prairie

In the heat of late summer, whole pastures east of Austin look dusted with frost - snow on the prairie, a native spurge whose white-margined upper leaves do the advertising its small flowers cannot. The white is a ruse of foliage, not petals; the true flowers are the tiny green-white cups at the center of each cluster.

Like all euphorbias it bleeds a milky latex sap when broken, and this species' sap is potent enough to blister sensitive skin and damage eyes - honest chemistry behind the pretty display. Cattle know it well and leave the white drifts strictly alone, which is why overgrazed pastures often carry the showiest stands.

It is an annual of the blackland prairies and post oak country, germinating in spring, growing chest-high through the summer, and flowering from August into October when little else risks the heat. Bees, wasps, and small butterflies work the nectar steadily; even the sap-wary find the flowers safe.

Backlit at golden hour, a colony reads exactly like its name - a field of green suddenly gone white, months ahead of any actual frost.