Sunflower seed head remains

On February 21st I went out to a sumpy place I know on the Blackland Prairie in northeast Austin. It was there, in the late spring of 2011, even in that year of the dreadful drought, that I found a thriving colony of wild sunflowers, Helianthus annuus. Now, some eight months later, I found their remains—or what remained of their remains—and this time there was some water in the sump that had been dry the last time I visited.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman

Spiderwort flower center

Okay, let’s make a clean sweep of it: here’s a picture showing the center of a fully open spiderwort flower I found outside the Austin Nature Center on February 22. Notice the masculine vanity in this member of the genus Tradescantia: six feathery purple stamens, each capped with a bright yellow anther. It isn’t only in the world of birds that the males show off.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman