A closer look at gaura

Click for better clarity and considerably larger size.

Here’s a closer look at one of the plants in the gaura colony that was flowering alongside the US 183 freeway on the overcast morning of April 2. The yellow-orange patches of color farther back correspond to a few interloping greenthread flowers, Thelesperma filifolium. I’m an interloper, too, from the species Homo sapiens.

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman

Gaura colony

Click for greater clarity and considerably larger size.

Unlike 2012, the early spring of 2013 in central Texas was an unusually cool and mostly rainless one that didn’t produce the dense displays of wildflowers that people here look forward to (and back at). Even so, by April 2nd I was able to depict this colony of gaura that had sprung up alongside the US 183 freeway about three miles from where I live. Gaura is also the name of the genus, though I’m not sure which species this is.

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman