Blue-eyed grass: a different look

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And here’s a blue-eyed grass flower that a spider had mostly sewn up. If you click the image for better clarity, you can see some spider threads holding the folded tepals together.

Date: March 29, 2013.  Location: the Mueller Greenway in east-central Austin.

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman

Blue-eyed grass: a closer look

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Here’s a closer look at the small wildflower in the genus Sisyrinchium that’s called blue-eyed grass even though it’s neither a grass nor, at least to my rods and cones, blue. As Eye see it, if the flower can be said to have an eye at all, it would be the yellow part at the center, but whoever dreamed up the name apparently thought of the whole flower as an eye, conceiving the central yellow as its pupil and the surrounding blue (i.e. violet) as its iris. And there we’ve finally hit on something, because botanists include the genus Sisyrinchium in the iris family.

Date: March 29, 2013.  Location: the Mueller Greenway in east-central Austin.

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman