Pearl milkweed vine leaf

On the autumnally clear morning of October 29th, I drove down to San Marcos, a town about 30 miles south of Austin, and one never mentioned in these pages before, to explore a place I’d discovered a few days earlier on the Internet: Purgatory Creek Natural Area. One of the things I found there was this leaf of a pearl milkweed vine, Matelea reticulata, a plant whose unique flowers you’ve seen several times in this blog. Almost all the vine’s other leaves were a normal color, so I doubt that the yellowing of this one was due to the somewhat cooler weather that had descended on central Texas. I could be wrong.

For those of you who are interested in photography as a craft, points 1, 3 and 12 in About My Techniques are relevant to this photograph.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman