More orange

Continuing with the orange theme that began with a painted Schinia moth and resumed with the fungus of the last post, here’s an orange globule on a burned loblolly pine tree, Pinus taeda. Remember that most of the pine forest in Bastrop burned down during the terrible Labor Day fire of 2011. Whether this globule is pine resin that got roasted then or whether it’s something that developed later, I don’t know.

Today’s photograph is yet another from an April 27th field trip to Bastrop State Park led by botanist Bill Carr.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

A Pycnoporus fungus

Here’s a fungus in the genus Pycnoporus that had incorporated some dry pine needles into itself. Like the last few photographs, this one comes from an April 27th field trip to Bastrop State Park led by botanist Bill Carr. Thanks to mycologist David P. Lewis for identifying the genus of the fungus. (I couldn’t give him enough information to distinguish between the two species in Texas.)

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Sabatia campestris

Continuing with the productive April 27th field trip to Bastrop State Park led by botanist Bill Carr, here’s a pretty little wildflower I don’t often see, even though it grows in my county as well as west and east of here. It’s Sabatia campestris, known by names that include Texas star, rose gentian, meadow pink, prairie rose-gentian, and prairie sabatia.

This species inhabits the central and south-central United States, but disjoint populations have been reported in New England, as you can confirm on the USDA’s state-clickable map.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Heartwing sorrel

Here’s another picture from the April 27th field trip to Bastrop State Park led by botanist Bill Carr. This time you’re looking at Rumex hastatulus, called heartwing sorrel. Do you see the tiny stylized hearts?

Probably not many people are familiar with this plant, but it grows in most of the states from New Mexico to Massachusetts, as you can confirm on the USDA’s state-clickable map.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Penstemon murrayanus

Over the last couple of months you’ve seen two species in the genus Penstemon: P. buckleyi from west Texas and P. cobaea from a little northwest of Austin. Now joining them from Bastrop State Park is Penstemon murrayanus, called scarlet beardtongue, red penstemon, scarlet penstemon, cupleaf beardtongue, and cupleaf penstemon. The cupleaf in the last two of those names refers to the depression at the center of each of the pale gray-green leaves clasping the plant’s flower stalk. Note the drops of drizzle; this was the hardest they came down, and then fortunately they stopped.

Today’s photograph is yet another from an April 27th field trip led by botanist Bill Carr. Even though Penstemon is in a different botanical family from the sages, this plant reminds me of the cedar sage I showed you last month.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Turning your back

Chances are you’d like to turn your back on the subject of dung beetles. This one hadn’t turned its back on its load of dung, but it had turned itself upside down and was rolling its precious cargo backwards. Even in that position the beetle managed to go so fast that I had trouble photographing it, and although most of the pictures I took didn’t turn out well this one is okay enough to show you.

And speaking of turning one’s back, last week I interrupted the series of pictures from the productive April 27th field trip to Bastrop State Park in order to show you some more-recent developments, but today and for the next week I’m going back to that outing.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Two intermingled wildflower colonies in the Texas Hill Country

How about this profusion of horsemints (Monarda citriodora) and firewheels (Gaillardia pulchella) that I encountered along FM 2766 in Blanco County on June 7th? Most of the horsemints here are more purple than the pale ones in the photograph you saw two days ago, but that’s just natural variation within the species.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Mexican hat at the shopping mall

In yesterday’s prairie picture you saw bunches of wildflowers, including some Mexican hats, Ratibida columnifera. Here’s a much closer look at one from May 10th at the Lakeline Mall shopping center in Cedar Park. Various wildflowers spring up spontaneously on undeveloped parts of the mall property, something I’ve been taking advantage of in my photography for a decade now. I showed one example of that two years ago:

https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/now-add-some-live-oaks-to-the-mix/

In today’s closeup, notice the Mexican hat’s curved stalk, a feature that doesn’t predominate in this species but that’s not rare either. Although the picture is from a month and a half ago, Mexican hat colonies are still prominent around Austin in this first week of summer.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

A different floral profusion

Click for greater clarity.

Put yourself at the scene of the last photograph and imagine walking a couple of hundred meters east on Meister Lane, crossing to the field on the south side of the street, and finding this oh-so-different profusion of wildflowers. The pale flowers in the foreground (and some also in the background) are horsemints, Monarda citriodora. The dark seed heads (and some fresher flowers heads) that share the foreground are clasping-leaf coneflowers, Dracopis amplexicaulis. The violet-colored flowers a little further back are California loosestrife, Lythrum californicum, which despite their name are native in central Texas as well, and which along with the clasping-leaf coneflowers make their debut in these pages today. Rising between the two main groups of loosestrife are the mostly reddish-brown heads of Mexican hats, Ratibida columnifera. The little mounds of new greenery in the distance are young Maximilian sunflower plants, Helianthus maximiliani, which will get a lot taller and bloom at the end of summer or in the early fall. Scattered among all those things are a few firewheels, Gaillardia pulchella, seemingly ubiquitous here this spring and most springs.

The photograph dates from May 28th on a part of the Blackland Prairie along the Round Rock-Pflugerville border.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Basket-flowers and firewheels

Click for greater clarity.

In the early spring I showed you some dense Texas wildflowers, and now I’m interrupting the pictures from Bastrop for the next several days to catch you up on some more-recent “colonial” pictures from later in the spring, even though today already marks the official beginning of summer. Oh well, the seasons lag the sun, so I can lag the seasons.

Today’s wowee-zowee photograph is from May 24th, when for the third year in a row at the intersection of Meister Ln. and Schultz Ln. in southernmost Round Rock I visited this great colony of basket-flowers, Centaurea americana. The red and yellow flowers in the background are Gaillardia pulchella, known as firewheels and Indian blankets.

If you’re interested in photography as a craft, you’ll find that points 2, 6 and 15 in About My Techniques are relevant to this photograph.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman