Ask Mr. Smarty Plants

First of all I’m going to refer you to the Houston Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas. There is a good possibility that they may have some or all of these lists on their website  .

Secondly, I would like acquaint you with some resources of the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center that will allow you to find such lists, or create them yourself.

Be aware that our data are not so extensive that we can zero in on the city of Magnolia, but East Texas, and possibly Montgomery County are probably within our capability.

Lets start with the plant lists by going to our Native Plant Database  and scrolling down to the Recommended Species Box. Click on “View Recommended Species” page, and you will get an enlarged version of the U.S. map. Click on East Texas, and you will get a list of 133 commercially available native plant species suitable for planned landscapes in East Texas. Go to the Narrow Your Search box to the right of the window, and you will find that there several criteria you can use to reduce the size of your list. For instance, if you select Texas under State, Shrub under habit, and Perennial under duration, and then check Sun under Light Requirement, Moist under Soil Moisture, and 3-6 under Height; clicking on the “Narrow Your Search” button will give you a list of four sun-loving shrubs that grow up to 6 ft tall.
 Clicking on the scientific name of each plant will bring up its NPIN page that has plant characteristics, growth requirements and photos. These can help you select plants suitable for your location. You can see that by changing your criteria, you can generate a variety of different lists.

Once you’ve found some plants plants that you are interested in, you can see if deer are interested in them too by checking our Deer Resistant Species page. Our caveat here at the Wildflower Center is that “a hungry deer will eat anything.”

As for toxic plants, there are several databases that we frequently use when we are asked questions about particular plants. When using these databases, its is much easier if you use the scientific name for the plant as you search the database. A list of the databases is included in this previously answered question .