Now add some live oaks to the floral mix

Click for greater size and clarity.

Here’s the fourth of four pictures that I’ve interpolated to show you that dense displays of wildflowers are still a common sight well into May in central Texas. The flowers shown here are black-eyed (or brown-eyed) susans, Rudbeckia hirta; firewheels or Indian blankets, Gaillardia pulchella; horsemints, Monarda citriodora; Texas thistles, Cirsium texanum. There’s a prickly pear cactus at the lower right, and the trees in the background are live oaks, Quercus fusiformis.

It’s hard to appreciate everything that’s going on in this blog-sized picture, but if you click the panel below you’ll get a larger view of the wildflowers by themselves.

Date: May 22.  Location: Cedar Park, a northern suburb of Austin. In particular, you’re seeing a portion of Lakeline Mall—yes, a shopping mall! This group of flowers and others like them border the far side of a road that separates the undeveloped from the developed portions of the mall property. I’ll bet most of you won’t see a sight like this at a shopping center in your area.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman

Same species, similar density, richer color

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So yes, I’ll say it again, we’re still having dense displays of mixed wildflowers in central Texas. While the last post showed the paler shades that horsemints, Monarda citriodora, can take on, this picture shows how rich the purple can be. It’s just a matter of normal variation, like complexion in people.

The date was May 21, and as I drove along back roads through ranching and farming country in Burnet County, about 45 minutes north of Austin, I saw dozens of large fields like this one, with dense colonies of horsemints stretching into the distance. Quite a sight. The interspersed red-and-yellow flowers are Gaillardia pulchella, known as firewheels and Indian blankets; as flowers or maturing seed heads, they also still blanket large areas in central Texas.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman