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