Prairie agalinis colony

Prairie agalinis colony; click for greater detail.

Yesterday’s post featured a young cottonwood tree that had sprung up on the not-yet-redeveloped section of Austin’s old Mueller Airport. With your attention naturally focused on the cottonwood and perhaps even more on the wispy cloud above it, you might not have noticed the many tiny spots of pink in the foreground near the base of the tree. Those are from a fall-blooming wildflower called prairie agalinis or prairie false-foxglove, Agalinis heterophylla. They called out to me, so when I was finished taking pictures of the cottonwood, I got close to the flowers and photographed them in their own right. Now you can have a better look, too.

For more information about prairie agalinis, including a clickable map showing the places in the south-central portion of the United States where this species grows, you can visit the USDA website.

© 2011 Steven Schwartzman