A little white snail on some blazing-star flowers

Little snails have appeared several times in these pages, but never on anything as appealing as this flowering spike of blazing-star, Liatris mucronata. I photographed the two together on a piece of the Blackland Prairie in northeast Austin on September 12th. For Austinites, this is the familiar (and only) species of Liatris that grows here, and that’s why I’d been excited to come across Liatris elegans and Liatris aspera when I visited Bastrop State Park in early September.

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman