Meadow parasol

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The best of the botanical field guides intended for the general public in my area is Marshall Enquist’s Wildflowers of the Texas Hill Country, whose pages I’ve turned through hundreds of times since 1999. I’ve still never seen some of the species shown there, so I’m happy on those one or two occasions each year when I add another “conquest.” That was the case on July 3rd when I hiked pretty far into the Bull Creek Nature Preserve and finally came across a few flowering groups of Daucosma laciniata (or laciniatum), which sources say is known as meadow daucosma or the more fanciful meadow parasol. I think you can see what prompted that second name.

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman