No snakes or brooms, but broom snakeweed
In Petroglyph National Monument in northwest Albuquerque on September 23rd I saw plenty of broom snakeweed plants, Gutierrezia sarothrae, flowering away. This one in the Piedras Marcadas section of the national monument appealed to me because of its contrast with the darker boulders it was growing among. Notice the sand sagebrush about a quarter of the way down the left edge of the picture (in fact if you follow the link to that post from a few weeks ago, you’ll see there was a broom snakeweed plant flowering behind the more conspicuous sand sagebrush).
Although broom snakeweed is listed for the county I live in in central Texas, it’s not common there, so I was happy to find it flowering in large numbers 700 miles northwest of home. If you’d like to see the distribution by states and counties, the USDA map will show it to you.
© 2014 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
Show us a few petroglyphs while you are at it, please. Love your photos.
Dianne
November 4, 2014 at 6:53 AM
Thanks, Dianne. I’ll see if I can get unpetrified and show some petroglyphs.
Steve Schwartzman
November 4, 2014 at 8:00 AM
Okay, I’ve scheduled a few petroglyph pictures for November 9th.
Steve Schwartzman
November 5, 2014 at 9:29 AM
That’s fantastic! I love how vibrant it is especially in relation to the landscape. Good eye!
eLPy
November 4, 2014 at 9:40 AM
The eye and I thank you. I saw lots of these broom snakeweed plants in Albuquerque and photographed several of them.
Steve Schwartzman
November 4, 2014 at 10:56 PM
I always loved how nature is pairing colors, shapes and textures and this shot has it all in one, excellent eye!
marksshoesbyevamarks
November 4, 2014 at 1:29 PM
That makes two consecutive ayes for an eye. And yes, it was the combination of colors, shapes, and textures here that led me to post this photograph rather than some of the others I took.
Steve Schwartzman
November 4, 2014 at 10:58 PM
It’s really interesting how much more interesting the photo is with that tall rock included, and the sky. I might have been tempted to capture just the plant and the three rocks surrounding it, but there are so many other contrasts added with the expanded view. It’s a beautiful combination.
shoreacres
November 5, 2014 at 6:18 AM
I did take some pictures looking down at flowering broom snakeweed plants, but I’m with you in preferring the photos of this plant that included rocks and sky. I’d planned to show a horizontal picture looking slightly upward from a point near the top of a high spot in the Boca Negra Canyon section of the national monument, but the dark boulders in the upper part of this image carried the day.
Steve Schwartzman
November 5, 2014 at 6:41 AM
[…] After the recent posts with nature photographs from Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, a couple of people asked to see pictures of petroglyphs, so here goes. The first photograph is from September 23rd; the flowers at the base of the rock are broom snakeweed. […]
Petroglyphs | Portraits of Wildflowers
November 9, 2014 at 5:30 AM
Love the composition and textures here. It is nice to see how the plants nestle into their niche together.
melissabluefineart
November 25, 2014 at 10:16 AM
What a good sound to your words: “… nestle into their niche…” It was common to see broom snakeweed in niches like this one.
Steve Schwartzman
November 25, 2014 at 12:26 PM
Thank you Steve. I am often delighted with your way with words and have been striving to be more poetic.
melissabluefineart
November 25, 2014 at 5:38 PM
“Way with words” is alliterative too.
Steve Schwartzman
November 25, 2014 at 6:49 PM
🙂
melissabluefineart
November 26, 2014 at 8:32 AM
[…] Gutierrezia sarothrae. Later, while preparing today’s post, I realized that I’d seen broom snakeweed in New Mexico last fall. This is clearly a plant that thrives in arid […]
Broom snakeweed | Portraits of Wildflowers
December 30, 2015 at 4:40 AM