Snails on the prairie
Snails that have climbed up on plants are a common sight on the Blackland Prairie in northeast Austin, as I confirmed again on May 4. Future posts will elucidate the great prairie wildflowers that you get hints of here.
© 2020 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
This is common there? I think I’ve seen snails out on unexpected purchases only a very few times. I might expect to see something like this in a tropical jungle, but this is a real surprise. Looking forward to more info!
krikitarts
May 7, 2020 at 4:50 AM
Yes, it’s common here. I spent several hours at an adjacent site yesterday and must have seen hundreds of snails on plants. Some of the plants were living, others merely dead stalks like the one in today’s photograph. In most cases a snail was by itself; in other cases snails were in pairs, trios, quartets. Over the two decades that I’ve been wandering the prairie in that area, I don’t remember ever before finding as many snails on plants as I have this week.
Steve Schwartzman
May 7, 2020 at 4:59 AM
As for why snails climb plants, an Austin city website says snails “feed on plants by scraping off the tissue or eating holes in the leaves or flowers.”
Steve Schwartzman
May 7, 2020 at 5:12 AM
Yes, a snail has little rasps on its tongue, which is properly called a radula, much like on a cat’s tongue. If you look closely at a snail on the inside of the glass of an aquarium wall, you can sometimes see it in action.
krikitarts
May 7, 2020 at 5:05 PM
I appreciate your confirmation. The Latin noun radula means ‘a scraper.’
Steve Schwartzman
May 7, 2020 at 6:54 PM
There’s a rail-trail not far from my house, and along one stretch, the scrubby trees have snails on the branches, up at eye level. I’ve never understood why this seems to happen, year after year, in that particular area. Maybe a sort of mountaineering club.
Robert Parker
May 7, 2020 at 6:52 AM
So you’ve got a snail-rail-trail up there. Given the variations in snail colors, I expect it was partly a pale-snail-rail-trail. You should send your friends a pale-snail-rail-trail e-mail about it. That aside, it’s good of you to confirm that your snails up north are as adventuresome as ours down here on the prairie. Given how small these snails are, a tree might well be the equivalent of a mountain.
Steve Schwartzman
May 7, 2020 at 7:00 AM
🙂 haha! It’s pretty early in Texas but your snail rhyming did not fail, seems hearty and hale
Robert Parker
May 7, 2020 at 7:18 AM
Then hail to you and hail to me
For rhyming now and yet to be.
Steve Schwartzman
May 7, 2020 at 11:12 AM
I wonder what the snails are after when they are climbing up those plants. It cannot be food. Perhaps to get a better view. Would be able to tell us, Steve?
Peter Klopp
May 7, 2020 at 8:35 AM
Austin city website says snails “feed on plants by scraping off the tissue or eating holes in the leaves or flowers.” A snail at the bottom of a stalk probably can’t tell what’s at the top. If so, then some climbs will be in vain.
Steve Schwartzman
May 7, 2020 at 11:14 AM
Thank you for looking this up for me, Steve!
Peter Klopp
May 8, 2020 at 8:46 AM
Sure thing.
Steve Schwartzman
May 8, 2020 at 12:07 PM
I love that grouping of snails! Good catch, Steve!
Lavinia Ross
May 7, 2020 at 9:17 AM
This was one of the best snail groupings I saw. A good find indeed.
Steve Schwartzman
May 7, 2020 at 11:15 AM
We spent the months of November through most of February in the Hill Country west of Austin (Hudson Bend) at an RV Resort. I was amazed to see these snails underneath the cover on the power post. The post is home to the electric receptacles for the RVs. It also was home to these snails, which I thought was rather odd. Nothing to eat on the power post…
Roadtirement
May 7, 2020 at 9:33 AM
So you have first-hand experience with our central Texas snails. An earlier commenter was surprised that we have lots of them here, unlike the places where he’s lived, Nebraska and Minnesota.
I wonder if snails under something like the cover of a power post are looking to keep hidden from predators. Or perhaps it’s a way to keep cooler in the Texas heat.
Steve Schwartzman
May 7, 2020 at 11:25 AM
Oh, a snail tree! 😀 The field behind them looks amazing too.
circadianreflections
May 7, 2020 at 4:16 PM
And a pale snail tree, at that. The fields in that are covered with colonies of wildflowers. After I saw how good things were on Monday I returned on Wednesday and again today. Pictures will begin coming as soon as tomorrow.
Steve Schwartzman
May 7, 2020 at 4:52 PM
Huh! The little blighters have taken to hiding in my tulip flowers! Well they did until recently. They also climb up iris leaves. I know all too well the damage done from those rasping tongues!
Heyjude
May 7, 2020 at 6:43 PM
I can see where that’s a problem for gardeners. Out in nature I just enjoy it and look for appealing photographs of the critters.
Steve Schwartzman
May 7, 2020 at 7:26 PM
And I thank you for it!
Maria
May 7, 2020 at 9:32 PM
You’re welcome—and it’s fun.
Steve Schwartzman
May 8, 2020 at 5:59 AM
Speaking of gardening, you should enjoy this:
https://www.boredpanda.com/tulip-garden-keukenhof-photography-albert-dros/
Steve Schwartzman
May 7, 2020 at 7:45 PM
I have seen some photos of Keukenhof by another photographer that were stunning, but I don’t mind another tour 😉
Heyjude
May 8, 2020 at 2:56 AM
This was my first time to hear about it or see it.
Steve Schwartzman
May 8, 2020 at 6:31 AM
I once wanted to visit it, but now I think it would be too crowded for me. Maybe best enjoyed through other photographers.
Heyjude
May 8, 2020 at 7:32 AM
Same photos – but I got there via a different site. Must have been amazing to see it without any people.
Heyjude
May 8, 2020 at 7:36 AM
Too bad it took a virus for the photographer to see the gardens without people.
Steve Schwartzman
May 8, 2020 at 8:08 AM
I like seeing snails this way. They have such bad reputation but hold a fascination for me. I suppose it must be the variety, and the spirals.
Maria
May 7, 2020 at 7:56 PM
In terms of pictures, snails make good subjects. I saw and photographed so many kinds of snails on the prairie during my three visits there this week. It was easy, because so many were there, and on so many kinds of plants.
Steve Schwartzman
May 7, 2020 at 8:49 PM
I suppose that on a prairie snails are a natural occurrence, whereas on a private garden it means a disaster. Such is life.
Maria
May 7, 2020 at 9:04 PM
Así es la vida, como decimos.
Steve Schwartzman
May 7, 2020 at 9:29 PM
Asi es, amigo.
Maria
May 8, 2020 at 7:29 AM
Until recently, the only snails I’d personally seen tended to be very small, white, dead ones left after controlled burns, or the very small ones I occasionally find on the sides of big fiberglass boats: so far from land I have to wonder how long it would have taken them to crawl down the dock.
But! On my last visits to the Galveston cemeteries, I found dozens of snails that look much like these clustered on the gravestones. That gave me pause. If there had been flooding rains, I could imagine them climbing high, but on granite? Sweet mystery of life, indeed. Between two visits, they’d moved from four or five stones and traveled about fifty feet to another set of stones. Only one snail remained on the first group of stones; I nicknamed it Greta Garbo.
shoreacres
May 8, 2020 at 7:45 AM
“Ah, sweet mystery of life” goes back 110 years now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naughty_Marietta_(operetta)
Younger readers probably have no idea what you’re referring to in making a link between Greta Garbo and a snail that has been left alone. I see that Garbo was born 125 years ago. Where did the 20th century go?
Since you’ve traveled around so much in nature for a bunch of years now, I’m wondering why you came across snails like these only recently, given that you have plenty of coastal prairie.
Steve Schwartzman
May 8, 2020 at 12:17 PM
I love this, Steve. I saw the phenomenon once, in a field outside of Seattle. So cool! Wonderful photo!
bluebrightly
May 8, 2020 at 4:03 PM
Thanks. You’d have been thrilled to walk around on this prairie parcel, where hundreds of snails were on display. Today we walked a part of the path I hadn’t trodden on my three earlier visits this week, and snails still abounded.
Steve Schwartzman
May 8, 2020 at 7:33 PM
I get to see more slugs than snails but do come across the occasional. Nice to see all that meadow escargot.
Steve Gingold
May 9, 2020 at 3:32 AM
Good word: some of the prairie plants carry a heavy escargot cargo.
Steve Schwartzman
May 9, 2020 at 7:06 AM
[…] pictures of one snail on a fresh basket-flower, another on an opening firewheel, and a foursome on a dry plant have pleased some of you, so here are three more photographs from the limaciferous* Blackland […]
Spiral spirit | Portraits of Wildflowers
June 7, 2020 at 4:35 AM