Spikes aren’t always spiky

Yesterday’s picture of a colony of Liatris mucronata shows that most plants of this species produce long and relatively slender spikes of flowers. In some cases, though, they develop bulges, as you see here. I don’t know what causes portions of some blazing-star spikes to deviate from their usual slenderness.

Like the previous photograph, today’s comes from east of Interstate 35 in the town of Buda on October 8th.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman