Lindheimer’s senna leaflets

In a comment a few days ago about some dry pods of Lindheimer’s senna, Senna lindheimeriana, Yvonne Daniel asked if I could post a picture showing what this kind of plant looks like “in the real.” I searched my archives and came across this previously unprocessed* picture taken on December 18, 2008, in Great Hills Park. As I recall, there had been some light rain overnight or that morning, and I found a senna plant looking the way you see it here. The leaflets of this species are covered with little hairs that make raindrops and dewdrops less likely to fall off than they would otherwise be. Soft, fuzzy, raindrop-retaining, and therefore attractive as those leaflets are, they have a somewhat unpleasant smell. Oh well, you can’t have it all. One thing you can have, though, is an article about Lindheimer that appeared last month in the Austin American-Statesman.

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* Since around 2006 I’ve taken all my pictures in what’s called RAW format, which is the digital equivalent of a negative in film photography. Each RAW file has to be processed in a computer program (e.g. Photoshop) and converted to a format like .tif or .jpg before it can be posted to a website.

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman