Late bluebell

The plants that botanists call Eustoma exaltatum and that regular folks know as bluebells, bluebell gentians, and prairie gentians, produce flowers that are among Texas’s largest and showiest. I didn’t see a lot of them this summer, but not a lot is different from none, and on July 29th I photographed this one on land at the southeast corner of Dessau Rd. and Wells Branch Parkway on the Blackland Praire in northeast Austin. The part of the property closest to that intersection has given way to a drugstore, but the rest of the tract is likely to remain free due to its sumpy nature: hooray for ground too sodden to build on. If you’re not familiar with bluebells, you may want to glance at a colony of these flowers I photographed three years ago just a few feet away on the same property.

I didn’t notice at the time I took today’s picture, but fanciful me now sees this bluebell as having two small eyes on either side of a long and narrow nose.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman