In past columns I have written about plants reactions to the drought and the record breaking heat we have had this summer.

The advantage to knowing how and why plants are acting the way they are may prevent you from wasting water or taking other
environmentally inappropriate action to address the symptoms you are seeing.

Cedar elms are very well adapted to the hot dry summers of South Texas. Their familiar reaction to weather where they are having trouble functioning in excessive heat and drought is to drop their leaves early.

The leaves gradually turn yellow and become covered with leaf spots and drop from the tree just like it was November.

This action can occur in August or September. The tree seems to say "it's just too unpleasant for me to function in this weather, I am going to defoliate early this year."

There is no action to take once the leaves begin their decline.

The tree is perfectly healthy and will put on new leaves next spring. Adding water or fertilizer will not prevent the drop.

Many figs have dropped their fruit and most of their leaves. Watering them deeply once per week may encourage them to re-leaf for a short time this autumn.

The better strategy might be to provide a deep irrigation every three to four weeks, just enough to maintain a few leaves and their roots.

Then if normal rainfall patterns return as predicted this fall, the fig will re-leaf for the 2010 growing season.

Lawns are the most noticeable apparent of the triple whammy of record heat, record drought, and drought restrictions. The appearance however is deceptive.

There are some dead portions of lawn, but the majority of the grass is still alive and very capable of greening up quickly when rains begin again.

Bermuda, buffalo and zoysia grass evolved in areas where a hot dry season was the normal course of a year's weather. Bermuda is well known for its ability to transform what looks like plant free, fried soil into a green lawn in a matter of days.

Zoysia grass generally maintains a tight uniform straw colored sod in dry periods. St. Augustine grass is a somewhat different story. It has less capability to shut down in a drought. If you quit watering your St. Augustine grass, a good portion would die.

This capability was proven in the drought test conducted jointly by the Texas Turfgrass Producers, San Antonio Water System and Texas A&M.

It was a little slower then Bermuda and zoysia but St. Augustine recovered after 60 days of no water, if the grass was grown on deep native soils.

The message here is don't despair, we are in a South Texas drought but the drought management rules are working as planned.