page_title: Brownsville, Texas
section_title: Flora and soil
hierarchical_section_title: Brownsville, Texas / Geography / Flora and soil
caption_attribution_description: English: Sabal mexicana plant, growing in a plantation along the coast of Oaxaca, Mexico.
context_page_description: Brownsville is a city in Cameron County in the U.S. state of Texas. It is on the western Gulf Coast in South Texas, adjacent to the border with Matamoros, Mexico. The city covers 81.528 square miles and has a population of 182,781 as of 2019. It is the 131st-largest city in the United States and 16th-largest in Texas. It is part of the Brownsville–Matamoros conurbation. The city is known for its year-round subtropical climate, deep-water seaport, and Hispanic culture.
  The city was founded in 1848 by American entrepreneur Charles Stillman after he developed a successful river boat company nearby. It was named after Major Jacob Brown, who fought and died while serving as a U.S. Army soldier during the Mexican–American War. As the city is the seat of government for the county of Cameron, the city and county government are major employers. Other primary employers fall within the service, trade and manufacturing industries, including a growing aerospace and space transportation sector. It operates international trading through the Port of Brownsville. The city experienced a population increase in the early 1900s when steel production flourished.
context_section_description: Broadleaf evergreen plants, including palms, dominate Brownsville neighborhoods to a greater degree than other locations in Texas, including nearby cities such as Harlingen and McAllen. Brownsville is home to the Sabal mexicana, the only species of palmetto palm native to Texas. Though it used to cover a large portion of the land next to the Rio Grande, the city contains one of the last stands of the species. The Citharexylum berlandieri (Tamaulipan fiddlewood), Rivina humilis (pigeonberry) and Leucophyllum frutescens (Texas sage) are also native flora.
  Soils are mostly of clay to silty clay loam texture, moderately alkaline (pH 8.2) to strongly alkaline (pH 8.5 and with a significant degree of salinity in many places; other types of soils present around the city include Cameron clay and sporadic amounts of Laredo silt loam. Due to Brownsville's proximity to the coast, Lomalta clay is common around the swamp areas of the vicinity. Several parts of the city have a high risk of localized flooding because of flat topography, ubiquitous low-permeability clay soils, and inadequate infrastructure funding.
  According to the United States Geological Survey, Brownsville's soils are primarily alluvium and windblown deposits. The majority of the city's soil is made of floodplain deposits from the Rio Grande river; it consists of clay, sand, silt, gravel and organic matter. Windblown deposits are made up of "active dunes and dune complexes" that contain mostly clay and silt near the coastal region and combination of clay, sand and silt inland.
caption: The Sabal mexicana (Texas sabal palm) is a native plant species in Brownsville.
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