Purple, yellow, green, and blue (plus an Oxford comma)
Click for greater clarity.
You’ve recently seen a colony of Liatris mucronata, known as gayfeather and blazing-star, and one of Helianthus maximiliani, or Maximilian sunflowers. Now here’s a view of the two species together. I find it curious that the sunflower spikes seem to have leaned largely one way, and those of the gayfeather mostly the other. This is the first time I remember noticing a difference like that.
By the way, the less-conspicuous yellow flowers in the lower part of the picture are partridge pea, Chamaecrista fasciculata, which you also recently saw, but up close.
The date was October 6th, and the place a prairie remnant on Dessau Rd. in far northeast Austin. The survival of this plot is only temporary, alas; I photographed from close to the ground and at a good angle to keep from showing the stores and houses that have already encroached on three sides, and the poles and wires along the increasingly busy road that forms this parcel’s fourth boundary.
© 2013 Steven Schwartzman
So in this case it’s not just “click for greater clarity” but also “comma for greater clarity”? Beautiful in either case.
Marcia Levy
November 3, 2013 at 6:22 AM
Your comment punctuates the usually botanical ones—and does so at the beginning of them rather than in the middle or at the end. You’ve started the day with a serial—as opposed to a cereal—comma.
Steve Schwartzman
November 3, 2013 at 6:34 AM
Gorgeous colours. What a shame that they will soon be lost.
Emily Heath
November 3, 2013 at 6:23 AM
The only consolation for me is that the “soon” sometimes drags out for a good while. I’ve had sites disappear within weeks of my discovering them, and others that have so far held out for over a decade and that I’ve visited over and over.
Steve Schwartzman
November 3, 2013 at 6:37 AM
It is football season, after all. The flowers remind me of an old cheer from high school days: “Lean to the left, lean to the right, stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight.” Sometimes, whole blocks of us would get distracted and we’d end up going in two directions, like the flowers.
Of course, that cheer wouldn’t do for wildflowers. Perhaps we could use something more like “Lean to the left, lean to the right, grow and flourish, bright, bright, bright!”
I’d never heard of the Oxford comma. After reading about it, I went looking for it in my posts. It’s there, but rarely. On the other hand, I often arrange lists in such a way that it isn’t necessary. Commas are interesting critters. I realized about a year ago I was overusing them, but I’ll be on the lookout for places where the Oxford comma might be useful.
shoreacres
November 3, 2013 at 6:26 AM
I like your alternative cheer. Now if we could just get most high school kids as interested in botany (or any other science, or math or language or history or literature) as they are in sports, I’d be the first one to cheer.
The Oxford comma also goes by the name serial comma and, in a seeming case of Anglo envy, Harvard comma. Of course—and that’s the intro to a bit of wordplay—even Harvard admits some students who know so little about English that they have to take a remedial course.
Steve Schwartzman
November 3, 2013 at 7:01 AM
Nature’s zig zag is very lovely here. You make me wonder if it continues below the purple in your hill country setting.
georgettesullins
November 3, 2013 at 6:58 AM
Actually, Georgette, this field is on the prairie side of Austin, which is the east, rather than the hilly side to the west. Your would-be zig-zag remains no more than a sideways chevron, I’m afraid, because I was already down on the ground when I took this picture. Let’s hope someday I do find more of a zig-zag; if so, I’ll be sure to bring it to you here.
Steve Schwartzman
November 3, 2013 at 7:09 AM
Was ‘lean to the left, lean to the right’ a precursor to the ‘wave’?
I like the four predominant colors in large patches. I played with your image in Photoshop using various artistic effects. There were some interesting and attractive results.
Jim in IA
November 3, 2013 at 6:59 AM
I don’t know the answer to your question, but my hair has often enough been wavy, and my heavy camera bag now sometimes makes me lean to the left or to the right.
Steve Schwartzman
November 3, 2013 at 7:20 AM
And believe me when I say I have a new appreciation for nature photographers of all sorts. I did enough climbing-with-camera to make me wonder how in the world some of you get to this place or that with all those lenses, tripods, monopods and so on.
I ended up having to make an emergency camera purchase after the one I was carrying froze up. What caught my attention is that the new, smaller Canon fit in a pocket and left me two free hands for climbing rocks and embankments. That was a very good thing.
shoreacres
November 3, 2013 at 9:43 AM
Many nature photographers carry a tripod around with them, but generally I find that too encumbering. My hefty camera bag is cumbersome enough all by itself. And yes, at times I pull myself (and it) through some difficult places, and at times it throws me off balance. C’est la vie.
Digital cameras keep getting better, and many of them are as small and light as the one you bought, but for the greatest picture-taking flexibility I have to stay with heavier (and more expensive) equipment.
Steve Schwartzman
November 3, 2013 at 9:54 AM
Lovely photo, Steve … “Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers …”
Swinburne (Laus Veneris)
Mary Mageau
November 4, 2013 at 6:34 PM
I’m intrigued that this picture brought Swinburne’s poem to your mind. I wasn’t familiar with “Laus Veneris,” or “Praise of Venus,” bit I looked it up and found it begins with a paragraph in 16th-century French. Interesting stuff.
Steve Schwartzman
November 4, 2013 at 8:06 PM
Seriously brazen colors! Like it.
kathryningrid
November 7, 2013 at 1:33 PM
And I like the adjectival phrase “seriously brazen.”
Steve Schwartzman
November 7, 2013 at 8:52 PM