Downy gaura gone to seed

If you don’t recall what Gaura mollis, known as downy gaura and velvet-leaf gaura, looks like when it’s flowering, you may want to take a look back at a post from last year. On September 24 of this year, when I was on the south bank of the Colorado River at Loop 360, I found a few of these plants that still had some flowers, but mostly they had gone to seed. In the specimen shown here, I was fascinated by the way a spider (presumably) had pulled the tip of the seed stalk into a loop.

The daubs of yellow in the background were from the many flower heads of camphorweed, Heterotheca subaxillaris, in the area.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman