A different floral profusion

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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