Cattails blowing

Cattails, Typha domingensis; click for greater detail.

People in many parts of the world are familiar with cattails, those erect plants with long, narrow leaves that grow in marshes and along the edges of watercourses. On the morning of August 10th I ventured to Meadow Lake Park in the rapidly growing northern suburb of Austin called Round Rock, where I photographed this colony of cattails (Typha domingensis) turning brown in the drought—the same drought that had caused the lake to recede noticeably from its normal shoreline. A prairie wind was blowing in from across the lake, so I used a shutter speed of 1/500 sec. to stop the motion of the plants as they swayed back and forth. It’s easy to tell, from the leaning stalks and the waving fronds, which way the wind was blowing.

(Hey, the guy can still do a straightforward landscape if he wants to.)

For more information about cattails, you can click here and here too.

© 2011 Steven Schwartzman