Flowery buttons
The last post showed a developing flower head of Barbara’s buttons, Marshallia caespitosa. Now you get to see what the wildflower looks like when it becomes a “button” with a typical diameter of 1 to 1.4 inches. Note that all the florets are disk flowers; this species, though a member of the composite family, has no ray flowers. And I, who am a composite of many things, took this photograph at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on May 1, 2009.
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Posted on this date last year: a group of bluebells seen from above.
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
The florets are fascinating.
Cathy
June 20, 2012 at 1:15 PM
Your words made me think that botanists can replace the Gershwins’ “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” with “Fascinatin’ Florets.”
Steve Schwartzman
June 20, 2012 at 1:26 PM
LOL! The alliteration was, however, unintentional!
Cathy
June 20, 2012 at 1:55 PM
But you wrote it, so you might as well take credit for it.
Speaking of alliteration, it occurs to me that if Dickens had been Darwin, he could have written a novel called not Little Dorrit but Little Floret.
Steve Schwartzman
June 20, 2012 at 2:19 PM
simply wonderful
Benoit
http://mesphotosetvous.wordpress.com
www.macuisineetvous.com
June 20, 2012 at 1:34 PM
Merci, Benoit. We have so many lovely wildflowers in Texas, as you’ve been able to see here.
Steve Schwartzman
June 20, 2012 at 1:41 PM
That’s perfect, nature at her beauteous best!
Finn Holding
June 20, 2012 at 3:22 PM
It’s hard to have a best here because we have so many great native species. They keep this blog in business.
Steve Schwartzman
June 20, 2012 at 3:31 PM
Nature could be imitating art, here – this lovely looks for all the world like a Dale Chihuly glass sculpture. Beautiful!
shoreacres
June 20, 2012 at 4:21 PM
Just the other day I was reading about a Chihuly exhibit in Dallas:
http://www.dallasarboretum.org/chihuly/FAQ.html
I never conceived this wildflower as being made of glass, but I can see it that way through your eyes.
Steve Schwartzman
June 20, 2012 at 4:27 PM
so many beautiful flowers in one!
Tammie
June 20, 2012 at 8:56 PM
That’s the great virtue of the composite family: many little flowers in a single head.
Steve Schwartzman
June 20, 2012 at 9:01 PM
What an intriguing flower head!
montucky
June 21, 2012 at 12:21 AM
As you know so well, botany can be a world of intrigue.
Steve Schwartzman
June 21, 2012 at 5:42 AM
I enjoyed, as I always do, watching flowers unfurl in your photographs. Your Barbara’s Buttons pairing is particularly fine.
Susan Scheid
June 22, 2012 at 9:47 AM
Thanks, Susan. Watching flowers unfurl is a fun thing to do.
Steve Schwartzman
June 22, 2012 at 11:06 AM
[…] For a refresher on disk flowers and ray flowers, you can look back at the text from a few days ago. If you’d like to, you can also take a glance at a Barbara’s buttons flower head in a more advanced state of opening. […]
Barbara’s buttons opening | Portraits of Wildflowers
July 7, 2014 at 5:56 AM