Welcome to yet another early visitor

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The latest of our early visitors this year is the Maximilian sunflower, Helianthus maximiliani. This species normally flowers in Austin beginning in late August or September, but on the morning of June 11th I found several of these sunflower plants blazing away on the little prairie that’s being restored at the Elisabet Ney Museum.* In contrast to the leaves of the “common” sunflower, notice how these are long and narrow and how they fold up along their midline.

The many smaller yellow flowers with brown centers are coreopsis, of which I showed you a seasonally advanced photograph way back in January. That’s the kind of ahead-of-ourselves year we’ve had and—with the Maximilian sunflowers—are still having in central Texas.

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* Some of you will recall that in 2011, even during the worst of the drought, I still managed to find things to photograph on this parcel of prairie. Last year’s posts from September 25 to October 5 showed an assortment of those hardy native plants.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman