A different purple
Click for greater clarity.
You’ve already seen phlox in these pages, and although I haven’t shown examples of all the colors it can come in, one that I did show is purple. Another purple springtime wildflower in Texas is stork’s bill, Erodium texanum, which like so many other species had a good year in 2012. Here you see a colony of them mixed in with Indian paintbrushes. While this species of paintbrush, Castilleja indivisa, is usually red or red-orange, the colony in today’s photograph shows that there are occasional variants whose color is a pale salmon or a creamy off-white.
I photographed this roadside scene on March 27 east of Johnson City, Texas. The town was named after forebears of Lyndon Johnson, whose wife became a co-founder of what is now called the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. The stork’s bill was named after its seed capsules, which are long and slender.
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
Great picture! This photo reminds me of the Ishihara Color Blind Test 😉
avian101
April 28, 2012 at 7:34 AM
Too bad I couldn’t arrange the flowers by color to represent a letter or a recognizable pattern.
Steve Schwartzman
April 28, 2012 at 7:59 AM
I don’t often comment but really enjoy your posts! Your photos are gorgeous. I added you to my blogroll for others to enjoy as well
graceyb
April 28, 2012 at 8:37 AM
Thanks for the addition. I could say that my continuing adding of pictures here is a consequence of my having been a math teacher, and although I wouldn’t want to subtract from nature’s attractiveness in its own right, it is very mathematical at times.
Steve Schwartzman
April 28, 2012 at 8:46 AM
I used to sew cotton dresses.. this one reminds me of the pretty little flower patterned fabric I’d pick out! I guess now I see where the fabric maker found their inspiration!!
Just A Smidgen
April 28, 2012 at 9:17 AM
You’re right in pointing out that people have long been inspired by nature and have copied many of its patterns.
Steve Schwartzman
April 28, 2012 at 9:57 AM
And to take Just A Smidgen’s comment a bit further, once those dresses my grandmother and mother had sewn wore out, they became scraps for quilts, including this one that was completely hand-pieced and stitched by my grandmother and her friends. The pattern, nicely enough, is called Grandmother’s Flower Garden.
shoreacres
April 28, 2012 at 9:32 AM
I really can see those patterns as stylized flowers. I can also see the arithmetic in the number of little hexagons making up each successive “ring” surrounding the center of each flower: 6, 12, 18, 24, ….
Steve Schwartzman
April 28, 2012 at 10:08 AM
I always enjoy viewing your beautiful flower shots!
Michael Glover
April 28, 2012 at 11:47 AM
Well, I aim to oblige: there’ll be plenty more.
Steve Schwartzman
April 28, 2012 at 2:22 PM
[…] was Pedernales Falls State Park, a few miles away from where I took the previous picture showing a stork’s bill colony on March 27. Note the stylized red star at the flower’s […]
A close view of stork’s bill « Portraits of Wildflowers
April 28, 2012 at 1:28 PM
What a feast for the eyes!!!
dhphotosite
April 29, 2012 at 11:17 AM
Bon appétit, David.
Steve Schwartzman
April 29, 2012 at 11:40 AM
I had a look at the larger pic. These are such pretty plants that I don’t think we have here (‘tho I could be wrong, not being a botanist….). Wonderful photography.
jmnpixels
April 30, 2012 at 4:36 AM
Thank you. Since the Age of Exploration a lot of species have been carried to remote parts of the world. I can’t say about the two shown here, but the one time I was in Australia, in 2005, I found some lantana—a plant native to my part of the Americas—growing on its own there.
Steve Schwartzman
April 30, 2012 at 6:33 AM