Not Titania but Tinantia

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

And yet men and women have called this the false dayflower to distinguish it from the “true” and related dayflower that blooms later in the season. And botanists, even on a midsummer night, call the genus not Titania but Tinantia. The species in this case is anomala, but what’s anomalous about it I don’t know: looks pretty nomalous to me (and just plain pretty, too).

I found at least a dozen of these “false” dayflowers at the edge of the same undeveloped property that played host on February 9 to the white anemone, the blue curls, and the agarita that you’ve seen in the past week. In the United States, Tinantia anomala grows only in central and southwest-central Texas; I often find it flowering in Austin in late March, April and May, but as was true for several species I’ve shown in these pages recently, this appearance in early February was another first for me.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman