Gumweed on the prairie

I photographed this partially open gumweed flower head (Grindelia sp.) on an extant parcel of the Blackland Prairie along Old Settlers Blvd. at Greenhill Dr. in Round Rock on July 14th. The site used to be a good deal larger, but two iterations of an office complex have shrunk it, and there’s little chance that the remaining land, which fronts an increasingly busy road, will hold out for more than a few years, if even that long. (Round Rock grew from about 13,000 people in 1980 to about 100,000 people in 2010.)

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman