New oak leaves

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Wandering on March 13 in Balcones Regional Park, I encountered the new leaves of an oak tree, probably a Texas red oak, Quercus buckleyi. Backlighting turned the leaves yellow, but without that light behind them they showed lots of red.

These leaves were coming up not far from an aged mustang grape vine that you saw making a mighty loop in these pages in January of 2012. On my March 13th visit of this year I found that a large tree had crashed down onto the trail from the adjacent slope, and when workers cut that up to clear the path, they also cut up the massive vine that the fallen tree had become entangled with. Say goodbye to a mustang grape that itself was more like a tree than a vine.

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman