Archive for January 2014
Life where there didn’t appear to be any at first
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In the same place where I photographed the lichen in the Upper Bull Creek Greenbelt on December 18th, I saw an oak tree that appeared to be dead, but then I noticed that on one dilapidated branch a few leaves had managed to grow, and they were even turning the red that it’s their nature to turn near the end of the year.
© 2014 Steven Schwartzman
Textured lichen
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To say textured and lichen at the same time is to be redundant, but I wanted to emphasize the fine details in this patch of lichen as well as the roughness of the tree bark it was on. Notice also the rosy color in the upper part of the lichen, which I don’t recall ever seeing before.
This photograph comes from the same December 18th walk in the Upper Bull Creek Greenbelt that brought you the preceding pictures of leafminer trails and a colorful agarita leaflet.
© 2014 Steven Schwartzman
Agarita turning colors
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If flameleaf sumac provides one of the largest displays of cooling-weather color in central Texas, agarita provides only an inch or two at a time when one or more of its three spine-tipped leaflets turn red. Formerly classified as Berberis trifoliolata and now as Mahonia trifoliolata, this shrub can also produce colorful leaflets in seasons other than fall, but always in bits and pieces; I’ve never seen a sizable part of an agarita turn colors all at once.
This view is from the Upper Bull Creek Greenbelt on December 18, 2013.
© 2014 Steven Schwartzman
Greenbrier and leafminer
Pictures of the thorny vine called greenbrier, Smilax bona-nox, have appeared a bunch of times in these pages, but only once with a hint of the kind of curious path visible here so extensively. Contorted trails like these are the handiwork—though no hands are involved—of insect larvae called leaf miners (or leafminers), about which you can mine more information in a Wikipedia article.
Today’s photograph comes from a wooded and therefore shaded area in the Upper Bull Creek Greenbelt on December 18th. That turned out to be my last photo session for 2013, but a productive one; you’ll see further fruits of it in the posts that follow.
© 2014 Steven Schwartzman
Ice forming
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When I spent two hours out in the cold at Great Hills Park on the morning of January 7th, I found that some of the water on the surface of the creek, especially where it met the land, had begun to freeze. It was a sight I hadn’t seen in years, maybe decades, and perhaps never around a fallen tree like this one.
© 2014 Steven Schwartzman
A poverty weed drama
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If that last view of poverty weed, Baccharis neglecta, wasn’t dynamic enough for you, here’s a little drama I’d seen playing out among some of this species’ silky tufts on November 13th. The location was Morado Circle at Misting Falls Trail in my Great Hills neighborhood.
© 2014 Steven Schwartzman
Late poverty weed
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Akin to the real feathers that you saw last time at the Arbor Walk pond were the feathery tufts that lingered nearby on a poverty weed bush, Baccharis neglecta. By December 4th most members of this species in Austin had partly or completely faded already, but this one was still at its peak of plumy attractiveness.
© 2014 Steven Schwartzman
Feathers on paloverde
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A different sort of “fur” that I noticed at the Arbor Walk Pond on December 4, 2013, was a small clump of feathers caught on a young paloverde tree, Parkinsonia aculeata. The feathers presumably came from one of the ducks or other waterfowl that frequent the pond. Read on for more.
Cattail like fur
Have you ever noticed that the decomposing seed core of a cattail, Typha domingensis, looks like fur?
I photographed this one at the Arbor Walk Pond on December 4, 2013.
© 2014 Steven Schwartzman
Silverleaf nightshade fruits
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Near the coral honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens, that appeared in the last two photographs (and that softly lights up the background of this one), I found some fruits of silverleaf nightshade, Solanum elaeagnifolium, at the Arbor Walk Pond in north Austin on December 4, 2013.
In one sort of illusion, the bright fruits may appear to be partly in front of the darker picture plane. In a different kind of illusion, you may imagine that you’re looking at two planetary orbs.
In early December there were still lots of silverleaf nightshade flowers around Austin, but the first freeze soon put an end to all of them. In a third type of illusion, you might try to picture (if you don’t already know) what sort of flowers produce the fruits shown here; you can see how close you came by checking a photograph from 2011.
© 2014 Steven Schwartzman
