Mexican pre-hat

Mexican hat, Ratibida columnifera, typically reaches its flowering peak here in May, but scattered plants can be found blooming through the summer and into the fall. When I wandered along the embankment of the expressway called Mopac two days ago, I found that, like various other native species in this remarkably mild winter, some Mexican hat was already flowering well before its usual time too. What you see here is an earlier stage in the development of a flower head than the one you may recall from a photograph taken on November 8 of last year. In this new picture, don’t you love the fuzziness and the imbricated purple and white on what will become the “column” that’s mentioned in the species name columnifera? And isn’t it strange that there’s not a hint of the bright yellow and rich reddish brown that are to come, and that almost everyone remembers when they think of Mexican hat?

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman