Where can I put seed balls for Horned Lizard habitat?
The short answer is everywhere horned lizards used to be and everywhere they still are! 'Where's that', you ask? Have a gander at this here range map for Texas Horned Lizards. Everywhere the "historic range" touches could and should be planted with native grassland mixes in seed balls.
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At Rehorning Texas, we've created several horned lizard habitat & food web native plant seed mixes, available as seed balls, for the major ecoregions and habitats where Texas Horned Lizard restoration is needed most.
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These include a mix for the Trans-Pecos grasslands, another for the Pandhandle's Plains, one for Central Texas where the horned lizard's prairie habitat has been receding westward, and others. We can also make custom mix seed balls on request for any region Texas Horned Lizards or their habitat are being restored.
How many seed mixes should I use to restore Horned Lizard habitat?
In most cases, especially in urban horned lizard habitat restoration, two or three mixes will be necessary: one with taller grasses and forbs where horned lizards can find shade and cover from predators, another with shorter species of grasses and wildlfowers planted adjacent to the taller grasses so that horned lizards can bask, forage for prey, and camouflage against the bare soil in between the root crowns of bunchgrasses. Horned lizards should be able to shuffle between these patches of tall and short plants. A third mix for shade-adapted species will likely be needed in shady areas that receive less than 6 hours of sunlight.
Recent research at TCU has proven that such horned lizard habitat "mosaics" of taller grasses, forbs, and shrubs adjacent to short, trodden plants exist in some small-town alleyways. The fence lines and edges of some alleyways often have taller weeds while the middle of the alley is often trodden or mown short. This mimics the natural habitat needs of horned lizards, and so horned lizard numbers are frequently higher in some small-town alleyways in parts of their range. We encourage folks to plant horned lizard habitat seedballs in alleyways, turnrows, churchyards, schoolyards, front yards, and back yards.