Ant on silverpuff

Do you remember the silverpuff, Chaptalia texana, that I found in the parking lot of my neighborhood Costco on February 1? Today’s picture, from March 5 on the property of native plant aficionados Pat and Dale Bulla, shows how the flower heads of this species usually develop: there’s a characteristic nodding posture, and in the upside-down U of the tightly curving stalk the plant’s woolly hairs often fill the space as if they were the strands of a spiderweb. Though there may occasionally be a real spider, this time there was an ant; it kept moving around on the silverpuff, but what it was looking for or trying to accomplish, I don’t know. (I do know that while silverpuff grows only in a small part of the south-central United States, and not at all in Ireland, I thought that on St. Patrick’s Day I ought to follow yesterday’s picture of an olive hairstreak with another one that has some prominent green in it.)

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman