Acres of sunflowers
Click for greater size and clarity.
Yesterday, as I drove north on FM 685 in Pflugerville, I began to see a yellow glow in the distance. Within about half a mile I came upon and was dazzled by the largest colony of wild sunflowers, Helianthus annuus, I think I’ve ever seen. You’re looking at a piece of the colony here, but the sunflowers covered acres, and they so dominated the field that little else could get a foothold.
© 2013 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
That must have been quite a site to see !!
norasphotos4u
May 31, 2013 at 6:54 AM
Indeed it was. I may go back.
Steve Schwartzman
May 31, 2013 at 7:36 AM
Wow what a feast for the eyes!
dhphotosite
May 31, 2013 at 7:14 AM
I came away well fed with pictures.
Steve Schwartzman
May 31, 2013 at 7:58 AM
Amazing sight!! I would have stopped and taken pics too!!!
SmallHouseBigGarden
May 31, 2013 at 7:24 AM
I was going to say “Who wouldn’t?”, but the fact remains that I was the only person taking pictures.
Steve Schwartzman
May 31, 2013 at 7:59 AM
They’re beautiful, nodding and smiling to the sun. It makes me smile, just to look at them.
shoreacres
May 31, 2013 at 7:39 AM
And of course it makes me smile to have been there and photographed the colony, and to be able to show it to all of you, even if only vicariously.
Steve Schwartzman
May 31, 2013 at 8:00 AM
This photograph is certainly reminiscent of the fields of sunflowers that inspired Van Gogh
esther
May 31, 2013 at 8:50 AM
Since you bring up Van Gogh’s paintings of sunflowers, I’ll add that I had some fun with that on New Year’s Day in 2012:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/in-order-not-to-have-a-pictureless-day/
Steve Schwartzman
May 31, 2013 at 12:16 PM
I love wild sunflowers, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many in one location before. Amazing shot!
Alex Autin
May 31, 2013 at 9:14 AM
I hadn’t seen so many before, and the photograph shows only a part of the colony.
Steve Schwartzman
May 31, 2013 at 12:17 PM
Fantastic. I wish I could have seen this.
mrsdaffodil
May 31, 2013 at 10:21 AM
If you grab a flight to Austin in the next week or so, you still can.
Steve Schwartzman
May 31, 2013 at 12:18 PM
Oh wow! The only other time I saw sunflowers as far as I could look was driving through Kansas.
Nancy
dogear6
May 31, 2013 at 11:47 AM
And I assume the ones in Kansas were the cultivated ones with large heads that farmers plant as a crop. The ones shown here are the wild originals from which the commercial strains have been developed.
Steve Schwartzman
May 31, 2013 at 12:20 PM
You’re correct. The ones in Kansas were commercial fields for food crops.
dogear6
May 31, 2013 at 12:49 PM
Spectacular, Steve! I love your “fields of flowers” shots; Van Gogh would be jealous 🙂
composerinthegarden
May 31, 2013 at 1:29 PM
Thanks, Lynn. One thing we have in central Texas is fields of wildflowers, though even by our standards this huge sunflower colony was exceptional.
Steve Schwartzman
May 31, 2013 at 2:11 PM
Wow! Spectacular!
soonie2
May 31, 2013 at 7:09 PM
Thanks for seconding the “spectacular.” The motion passes unanimously.
Steve Schwartzman
May 31, 2013 at 10:48 PM
Quand je vois ça, cela me fait envie. Les nôtres ne sont pas encore sortis de terre tellement il pleut et les champs sont inondés.
bon week end Steve
chatou11
June 1, 2013 at 4:20 AM
Ici on a besoin de pluie, et là on a besoin de tourneols. Nous devrions faire un échange.
Steve Schwartzman
June 1, 2013 at 7:25 AM
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June 3, 2013 at 6:27 AM
Spectacular, thanks for sharing.
Tuscan olive grove girl
June 4, 2013 at 6:00 AM
You’re welcome. How could I not share this spectacular field of sunflowers with all of you?
Steve Schwartzman
June 4, 2013 at 6:59 AM
Happy!
Shannon
June 8, 2013 at 7:49 AM
Yes, a happy site indeed. Sometimes I think yellow is my favorite color.
Steve Schwartzman
June 8, 2013 at 8:11 AM
Many decades ago I think half of Pflugerville was related to me. As the great aunts and great uncles died, though, their children took off for bigger cities and, hopefully, bigger fortunes.
Russel Ray Photos
June 17, 2013 at 8:37 PM
I didn’t know you had that connection. When I came to Austin in 1976, the population of Pflugerville was tiny, maybe under a thousand. Now I think it’s around 50,000. It’d be hard for you to have half that many relatives there these days.
Steve Schwartzman
June 17, 2013 at 11:05 PM
I have a few billion relatives (Catholics!) scattered around there in Pflugerville, Floresville, Stockdale, Karnes City, Pleasanton, and then down near the valley in Kingsville and Riviera. The Mormon side of my family (many more billions) is over in the New Orleans area and up in northern Utah and southern Idaho.
And those are just the ones I know about!……..lol
Russel Ray Photos
June 17, 2013 at 11:37 PM
It sounds as if you have as many relatives as there were sunflowers in this field.
As for Karnes City, I don’t think I’d ever heard of it till last year, when I passed through there on a 300-mile wildflower viewing trip one Saturday. I later showed one photograph taken close to there:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/standing-winecups/
Steve Schwartzman
June 18, 2013 at 6:18 AM
[…] 24th I could still enjoy the glorious wild sunflower you see here. (Although I posted a picture of a wonderful sunflower colony in May, this is the first close-up of a sunflower I’ve shown in 2013. What took me so […]
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July 14, 2013 at 6:27 AM
There is definitely a power in numbers to impress! 🌻
tanjabrittonwriter
August 11, 2021 at 7:20 PM
How well I remember this colony. The field has so far held on but the sunflowers since then have been paltry.
Steve Schwartzman
August 11, 2021 at 8:06 PM
You might have seen the field at its absolute best, so anything less would pale in comparison.
tanjabrittonwriter
August 11, 2021 at 9:46 PM
Yes, that’s it. What I saw in 2013 is likely to remain the absolute best because the field is along a busy road in a suburb where rapid development has continued, so the field probably won’t avoid getting developed for much longer.
Steve Schwartzman
August 11, 2021 at 10:53 PM
That’s very sad.
tanjabrittonwriter
August 11, 2021 at 11:05 PM
So far in 2021 I’ve lost at least five properties where I’d previously taken nature pictures, often many times.
Steve Schwartzman
August 11, 2021 at 11:11 PM
I don’t know what it would take for communities to declare a limit on development. I fear most towns and cities only care about growth and the bottom line without considering the cost to nature.
tanjabrittonwriter
August 11, 2021 at 11:18 PM
When I moved to Austin in 1976, Pflugerville probably had less than a thousand people. The estimated population there now is 68,000, up from 47,000 in 2010. The town has set aside some land for parks and trails but I wish it had been more.
Steve Schwartzman
August 11, 2021 at 11:24 PM
The Pflugerville story is being repeated in countless places… 😦
tanjabrittonwriter
August 12, 2021 at 3:13 PM
Pflugerville ist Jedermannville.
Steve Schwartzman
August 12, 2021 at 8:12 PM
Ja, leider!
tanjabrittonwriter
August 12, 2021 at 9:07 PM
Speaking of which, probably only a minority of Pflugerville’s residents know that the town is named after an early settler, Henry (presumably Heinrich) Pfluger, who came to Texas in 1849 in the wake of the 1848 unrest in Germany. I suspect that very few people in Pflugerville know that Pfluger is the German word for a plowman.
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Steve Schwartzman
August 13, 2021 at 6:43 AM