Our spring arrivals are here in central Texas; our bluebonnets, our hummingbirds, followed by our barn swallows that are busy finishing a new nest on our back porch, plenty of red wasps and yellow jackets, and the newest – fire wheels, sundance or Indian blankets, or binomially, Gaillardia punchella.
    

For some reason, these beautiful flowers came up this year. In the past, we hadn’t seen them in these numbers. It is a hardy, drought tolerant, annual, native to the central United States, it is easily established from seed and forms dense colonies of brilliant red flowers with yellow rims. Here’s a dense colony, with a few sunflowers mixed in, in my yard.

This flower thrives in heat and full sun in well drained, soils. Its sure getting that in my front yard!

It is almost un-Texan to say it, but fire wheels are nearly as pretty as bluebonnets.