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Flowers and Plants Herps

Texas Horned Lizard

After all the miles of hiking around Granite Gap area, looking for lizards (and especially lifer herps!) I have never found a Texas Horned Lizard. This morning, I went to Lordsburg for groceries and gas and on the return trip took the road to Animas from I-10. About ten miles down the road, there was an odd looking lizard on the road, so I turned around and slowly approached it. It was a Texas Horned Lizard! Fortunately, State Highway 338 has very little traffic and I was able to take photos from the truck. I wanted to take more photos in a natural setting but when I parked the truck on the side of the road and started walking toward it, the lizard scooted off into some thick brush and I lost it.

And here it is. The light stripe down the center of the back is diagnostic, as is the arrangement of the occipital horns. There are also two rows of abdominal fringe scales.
Another angle. Over its range, Texas Horned Lizards are not doing well. The species has disappeared from nearly half of its original range.
Also along that road, I found several of these plants, Davis Mountains Mock Vervain, Glandularia pubera. Since the Davis Mountains are in Texas, it seems to fit with a Texas Horned Lizard. I can find no interesting facts about this plant.

One reply on “Texas Horned Lizard”

What an epic herp! I’m glad it was on a road you could pull over. That Mock Vervain is ver similar to the Southern Mock Vervain (Glandularia gooddingii).

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