Pristine
Wandering along a trail in my northwest Austin neighborhood on August 1st, I stopped to photograph this flower head of a blackfoot daisy, Melampodium leucanthum. It struck me as the most pristine specimen of that common wildflower I’d ever seen. I don’t know what the very tiny specks of black on the white rays are.
© 2014 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
Really wonderful picture.
bentehaarstad
October 5, 2014 at 7:41 AM
This picture is from August 1, but I saw clusters of these flowers as I drove across western Texas yesterday.
Steve Schwartzman
October 5, 2014 at 7:46 AM
Pristine is a good word. Without your pointing out the tiny black specks, I would have declared this one perfect, and gone off thinking I needed to clean my computer screen. It’s a beautiful flower, and I do like those little yellow “curls.”
shoreacres
October 5, 2014 at 7:52 AM
I’m happy to have saved you a screen cleaning, unless your screen actually needed cleaning.
I keep wanting to make the noun pristinity, but no dictionary is willing to humor me. Too bad, because pristinity would rhyme with divinity and be an attribute thereof. Oh well, in the process of searching for that non-existent form I learned that the ‘unspoiled’ and ‘spotless’ senses of pristine date from only about a century ago.
Steve Schwartzman
October 5, 2014 at 8:13 AM
Perfectly lovely! and I love the idea of ‘pristinity’ as an attribute of divinity – smiles –
The Course of Our Seasons
October 5, 2014 at 9:43 AM
Given that you join me in approving pristinity, perhaps we share consanguinity.
Steve Schwartzman
October 5, 2014 at 11:14 AM
The specks are barely noticeable and hardly worth the mention. The flower is perfect for my money and so is the image. Like Linda, I really like the curly curls.
Steve Gingold
October 5, 2014 at 5:51 PM
I’ll pretend that the tiny black spots are flecks of vanilla in the ice cream of the broad white ray flowers, which contrast with the star-like yellow disk flowers and their curling parts.
Steve Schwartzman
October 5, 2014 at 9:34 PM
I wouldn’t have noticed the specks if you hadn’t pointed them out! Pristine was exactly the right choice of descriptor…..
Cynthia, aka Gaia gardener
October 5, 2014 at 6:38 PM
The specks are small indeed, perhaps just blown onto the white rays from something nearby. Had I noticed them at the time, I might have tried to blow them off.
Steve Schwartzman
October 5, 2014 at 9:36 PM
Stunning, specks and all!
norasphotos4u
October 5, 2014 at 8:25 PM
I’ve made speck-tators of you all.
Steve Schwartzman
October 5, 2014 at 9:37 PM
So true! A close up of my skin would probably reveal very large specks but then I don’t claim any pristinity, so a few specks and splotches here and there wouldn’t matter.
Gallivanta
October 8, 2014 at 2:43 AM
What a beautiful flower!
montucky
October 6, 2014 at 10:43 PM
And I see from the USDA map that this species grows across most of Arizona, so you might well have seen it when you lived there.
Steve Schwartzman
October 7, 2014 at 7:27 AM