Native Plants

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Saturday - June 07, 2014

From: San Marcos, TX
Region: Southwest
Topic: Plant Identification, Poisonous Plants
Title: Plant ID from San Marcos TX
Answered by: Barbara Medford

QUESTION:

My dogs love to eat the leaves of a certain little orange wildflower. It might be Wedelia or Texas creeping oxeye. Have you ever heard of this?

ANSWER:

It turns out that both "wedelia" and "Texas creeping-oxeye" are common names for the same plant, as you will learn when you follow this link, Wedelia texana (Zexmenia) to our webpage on it. It is a small shrub in the 1-3 ft. category and not a little wildflower. We went to our Native Plant Database and, using the Combination Search, looked for Texas, "herbs" under Habit, and "orange" under Color, and got 14 results of which only 6 looked remotely like your description and most of the flowers looked yellow to us:

Castilleja indivisa (Entireleaf indian paintbrush)

Castilleja purpurea var. lindheimeri (Lindheimer's paintbrush)

Krigia caespitosa (Weedy dwarfdandelion)

Oenothera triloba (Stemless evening-primrose)

Oxalis stricta (Common yellow oxalis)

Viola pubescens (Downy yellow violet)

That's as close as we can come, if you are asking if we ever heard of this flower. If you are asking if this is a toxic plant for dogs, we suggest you go to this website, ASPCA List of Toxic and Poisonous Plants for Dogs, and search, by scientific names, for whatever plant you think is might be. If you are asking if we ever heard of dogs eating flowers, sure, we have, but if your dogs are not sick yet, we wouldn't be too worried.