What I found on the prairie

Click for better color and greater clarity.

On July 29, as we were driving north on Interstate 35 just past Howard Ln., we suddenly saw on our right some Liatris mucronata plants that were flowering a bit ahead of schedule.* The next day I went back with my camera to the tract that I call the Pflugerville Prairie and took a bunch of pictures. The one shown here plays off the gayfeathers or blazing-stars, as they’re known, against a colony of greenthread, Thelesperma filifolium, a species that has been having a summer resurgence in many places around Austin in recent weeks.

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* This wasn’t freakishly before the usual time, as you saw in a post in May, but just a matter of weeks.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman