Human Flower Project
The Aggie Bluebonnet
Only a Texas Aggie would dream of changing the color of the state flower, and only an Aggie could pull it off.
Texas A&M’s Dominique Kirk (22) sailed for
the basket against Memphis last night. The
Aggies lost 64-65 but return home to a floral
consolation prize
Photo: David J. Phillip, for AP
Texas A&M is out of the NCAA basketball tournament, losing by one point to Memphis in the final three seconds of play last night. But really, most people never figured they’d ever get even this far. That’s because Texas A&M = FOOTBALL, and all that comes with it—bonfires, monster mums, and the 12th Man (the Aggie fans’ tradition of standing up for the duration of every game just in case they’re needed on the field).
Anyone who’s been within 10 miles of a Texas A&M alumnus knows that Aggie spirit will not, cannot be contained. To wit: the grit of A&M men’s basketball coach Billy Gillispie, who with several legions of red-ass support has turned the university’s lackluster program into one of national respectability. New York Times sportswriter Pete Thamel must have just fallen off the commuter train to insinuate, as the headline of his Gillispie profile puts it, “Coach’s ‘Unhealthy’ Obsession Has Led to Success at Texas A&M.”
Whether or not it’s healthy, whether or not they succeed, Pete, EVERYONE who is, was or hopes to be associated with Texas A&M is obsessed!!!
Lupinus texensis
daring to bloom maroon in Austin
Photo: Human Flower Project
Let a Human Flower Project prove it to you. About 25 years ago, horticulturists at College Station got a bead on developing new colors of the Texas bluebonnet. Is nothing sacred? Actually, at A&M everything is sacred, from the boots of the marching band members to the backflip kisses required after each touchdown. So yes, if undertaken with Aggie Spirit, the prospect of adulterating the state flower is not only proper, it’s potentially righteous.
Jerry Parsons recounts some of the tale:
“In 1982, a dying con artist and Texas naturalist named Carroll Abbott, Mr. Texas Bluebonnet, implanted in the mind of a naive horticulturist, me, a dream of planting the design of a state flag entirely composed of the state flower, bluebonnets, to celebrate the 1986 Texas’ Sesquicentennial.”
That charming idea came to involve thousands of researchers all focused on larger aims. “Financially stressed farmers needed another crop with which to diversify production,” Parsons explains. And the bluebonnet was a good choice since its input costs are low and the plants return nutrients to the soil. Also, a state flag made with bluebonnets would promote A&M’s whopper horticulture program with Texas flash.
The Lone Star flag is, of course, red, white and blue, so where was the team going to come up with white and red bluebonnets? White flowers didn’t take too long to develop, but the red bluebonnet was a real challenge. “Caroll Abbot himself had roamed the fields of Texas for years and had only seen three pink-blooming bluebonnet plants.”
Being “obsessed,” however, the A&M horticulturists eventually did find a patch of pink bluebonnets just outside San Antonio. By continuing to sow and select for the pink color, they figured a red bluebonnet was on the near horizon. But here’s where Aggie spirit overtook them.
Jeff Abt, telling all in his piece for The Daily Sentinel of Nacogdoches, names names…
Horticulturist “Greg Grant, being an Aggie, thought to himself, ‘These pink bluebonnets with the blue tinge in them look a bit like the color maroon. Let’s select out, not for the color red, but for the color maroon. Who cares about the Texas flag. It’s Aggies that matter.’”
Horticulturist Greg Grant
one of the Aggies
behind the maroon bluebonnet
(pictured here at Mercer Arboretum)
Photo: Human Flower Project
We should have known. Greg is a dynamo, brilliant, funny, with a streak of mischief. For years he was the Bexar County Extension Agent, leading imaginative community projects like a citywide search for the true “San Antonio Rose.” It would be just like him to divert this somewhat namby pamby research effort into a big horticultural bray for A&M.
By the mid-1990s, Grant and Parsons and other Aggie co-conspirators had succeeded. In the fall of 1998 seed of the Texas Maroon Bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis) hit the market. Jerry Parsons earlier that year had predicted that the new flower would be dubbed ‘Greg’s Maroon,’ for the impish revolutionary of Texas horticulture, but of course it didn’t happen that-a-way. Even though for some legal reasons we can’t understand, the flower can’t be officially named for the university, far and wide it’s known as “The Aggie Bluebonnet.”
Last fall our neighbor Katie tossed out some wildflower seed here in Austin; she was horrified when two weeks ago her bluebonnets bloomed maroon. “I may have to get out here with some orange spray paint!” she declared.
Aggie (with telltale ring)
and maroon bluebonnets
Photo: Texas A&M University
Would Greg Grant consider developing an orange version of the state flower for UT fans? Uh, no. “Grant says years ago he noticed brownish flowers in a white bluebonnet field, but he promptly pulled them up, stomped on them and threw them away. He says University of Texas folks will just have to do without.”
UT has recently taken over the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and, it would seem, now has in harness the expertise to develop a burnt orange lupine. But do they have anything comparable to the crazed Aggie Spirit that such a task requires? We’ll see.
(Texas, by the way, lost in the second round to Southern Cal.)
Comments
Cornell’s flower color story: Our Department of Horticulture has grown flowers for massive displays around stages at various commencement venues for decades. They’ve featured two varieties of geraniums (err, pelargoniums) one with white and the other with red flowers—the University’s colors. One of our greenhouse workers noticed that the red variety had a distinctive orange cast, not the official ‘Cornell Big Red’ red (#b31b1b or 179/27/27, not sure of the print equivalent).
Fortunately, our greenhouse worker didn’t have to breed a new pelargonium. She just went out and trialed a bunch and now our stage set-ups feature red geraniums that are a pretty good match to Cornell red.
In spring 2000 we bought bluebonnet plants for deck containers and eagerly anticipated our first Spring in Austin, and the flower photos we could send to our out-of-state family… what a shock when they were the Aggie variety. Your photo doesn’t quite capture the intensity of that maroon!
Thanks, Julie, for letting us know who gets both credit AND blame.
Annie at the Transplantable Rose