Cattail colony shedding

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In the last post you saw a goldenrod colony that was being coated with fluff blown off an adjacent colony of cattails, Typha domingensis. This is that other colony, and you can see bits of cattail fluff floating through the air across the top of the photograph.

I took this picture along Wells Branch Parkway near Drusilla’s Drive in Pflugerville on January 20th.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

A certain look

Sometimes a photographer goes for a toned-down look by using software to remove much of the color from an image. You may think that’s what I’ve done here, but I haven’t: this is the subdued winter tonality I found when I wandered into a wonderland along Wells Branch Parkway near Drusilla’s Drive in Pflugerville on January 20th. The double dose of feathery white came from a colony of goldenrod, Solidago spp., that had long since gone to seed and was now getting coated with seed fluff blown off an adjacent colony of cattails, Typha domingensis. The bits of red along the ground and the faint overall rosy cast of the photograph came from the leaves and canes of some dewberry vines, Rubus trivialis.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Mistletoe on a bare tree

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Even when a deciduous tree has shed all of its own leaves for the winter, it may still bear the ones put out by the hemi-parasite called mistletoe. I photographed our local species, Phoradendron tomentosum ssp. tomentosum, near the intersection of Drusilla’s Drive and Wells Branch Parkway in Pflugerville on January 20th.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

First flowers

The last two months here have been colder than average, with repeated overnight freezes putting an end to fall flowering and then delaying any spring reflowering—till now. On February 13th, with a noon temperature near 60°F (16°C), I went walking on some undeveloped land in my neighborhood and finally saw a native plant beginning to blossom. It was an agarita bush, Mahonia trifoliolata, some colorful autumn leaves of which you saw not long ago.

I originally had an older picture scheduled for today, but I bumped it so you could see something current and floral and bright.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Ball moss with colorful background

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Here the rusty blackhaw, Viburnum rufidulum, served only as a background for this ball moss, Tillandsia recurvata, that I photographed clinging to a lichen-coated tree branch on a wet morning in December. If you’d like to learn more about ball moss and get a closer and more textured look at one, you can visit a post from 2012. To see the places in the southern United States where ball moss grows, you can check the state-clickable map at the USDA website. And if you’re interested in photography as a craft, I’ll add that points 2, 5 and 6 in About My Techniques are relevant to this photograph.

So ends our baker’s week (i.e. eight days) of photographs from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on December 6, 2013.

© 2104 Steven Schwartzman

Not subdued colors

Not at all subdued in color were many of the leaves on this rusty blackhaw, Viburnum rufidulum, that I saw at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on the wet morning of December 6th.

If you’re interested in photography as a craft, you’ll find that point 20 in About My Techniques is relevant to this photograph.

© 2104 Steven Schwartzman

Subdued colors

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Speaking of subdued colors at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on the overcast and wet morning of December 6th, here’s an egg case from what may be a Carolina mantis, Stagmomantis carolina, on a small branch of what was definitely a Blanco crabapple tree, Malus ioensis var. texana. This egg case was at most an inch (25mm) long.

If you’re interested in photography as a craft, you’ll find that points 1, 2, 6 and 11 in About My Techniques are relevant to this photograph.

© 2104 Steven Schwartzman

A different look at gulf muhly

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Not everything that I photographed at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on December 6th was colorful. Here you see some gulf muhly, Muhlenbergia capillaris, that caught my attention because the raindrops on it were frozen at the time of my morning visit.

The last time you saw gulf muhly, in a photograph from Arkansas in November, the grass was in a decidedly pink phase.

© 2104 Steven Schwartzman

Texas red oak

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Yet another colorful thing I photographed at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on the overcast morning of December 6th was this changing oak tree, presumably Quercus buckleyi. If you’d like to see a closeup of a leaf of that species you can check out a post from 2012, and if you’d like to see a new leaf of that species in the spring you can visit a post from 2013.

© 2104 Steven Schwartzman

Prairie fleabane daisy in two stages

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Another colorful thing I saw at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on the overcast and wet morning of December 6th was this opening flower head of a prairie fleabane daisy, Erigeron modestus, beyond which you can make out the leftover receptacles of two spent seed heads. If you’d like a reminder of a stage between the fresh and the forlorn, you can fly back to a post from close to a year ago.

© 2104 Steven Schwartzman