Mealy blue sage and friends

When I went walking in the northeast quadrant of US 183 and Mopac on October 17th, in addition to a colorful greenbrier leaf and some new greenbrier growth I found a resurgence of many kinds of wildflowers. One was mealy blue sage, Salvia farinacea, which makes its primary appearance in the spring but comes up again to a lesser degree in the fall, as you see here. Note the detached but still clinging flower and the bits of spiderweb. The pink in the background is from our seemingly ubiquitous purple bindweed, Ipomoea cordatitriloba.

Even now, a month later to the day, I’m still finding occasional mealy blue sage flowers in Austin. And even now, year after year after year, I’m repeating that mealy blue sage flowers are more purple than blue.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman