Red yucca

Buds of red yuca, Hesperaloe parviflora; click to enlarge.

Fleecy clouds last week pulled me to Mount Bonnell, a high place above the Colorado River with a vista downward onto a swathe of west Austin and upward into the unobstructed sky. Along the path I found some budding red yucca, Hesperaloe parviflora, a species that is native farther west in Texas but that has been so widely planted as an ornamental that it now occasionally grows in Travis County on its own. As is my wont, I lay on the ground so I could look up at the red yucca (which isn’t a yucca, but a member of the century-plant family) and position it against the sympathetic sky: background, background, background.

© 2011 Steven Schwartzman