Monochrome marsh fleabane colony

I found this expansively monochrome colony of marsh fleabane, Pluchea odorata, gone to seed and drying out in the also drying bed of Devine Lake in Leander on November 26th.

Goodbye, 2014. We won’t see you again.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Cold enough once again

The outside thermometer yesterday morning read 37°F (3°C), and because a few nearby roofs were white I thought I’d make myself an honorary northerner for a change and try to photograph some frost. Instead, and to my surprise, I found once again that a couple of dozen frostweed plants (Verbesina virginica) in Great Hills Park had done their overnight ice trick, and that’s what I ended up taking pictures of. The photograph I posted in November showed the ice against a blue sky, so I’ve chosen a different sort of view for today’s post; this one, unlike the last, was taken in natural light rather than with a flash.

If you’re unfamiliar with this strange phenomenon, you can go back to a post from 2011 that explained it.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Corky flanges and colorful leaves

What books call the “corky flanges” on cedar elm trees, Ulmus crassifolia, are strange structures, typically wider than the branches they grow on. Here you see some particularly broad ones, along with a few unusually colorful cedar elm leaves, along the Boatright Memorial Trail in northwest Austin on December 15th. Talk about chaos, right?

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Goldenrod when it’s no longer golden

How about this tall goldenrod (Solidago altissima) that had gone to seed and turned fluffy, like the clouds above it? Today’s photograph goes back to November 24th along Burleson Rd. in southeast Austin.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

A tendency to turn yellow

I’ve noticed that the leaves of Matelea reticulata, the pearl milkweed vine, have a tendency to turn yellow toward the end of the year (and occasionally at other times too). When I was photographing along Great Northern Blvd. on the overcast morning (hence the gray background) of December 3rd I came across this unusually vivid example, even to the point that the yellow was shading into orange. No one’s keeping score, but go ahead and add this to the series of late-fall foliage you’ve been seeing here for weeks. You can also add the fact that the darker little leaf came from a cedar elm tree, Ulmus crassifolia. Most likely the vine had recently been growing on a cedar elm but somehow became detached and took the leaf along with it. There’s also a possibility, though I think a less likely one, that the leaf fell off a cedar elm higher up and got caught on the milkweed vine on its way down.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Both sides now, again

 

A couple of comments about this morning’s photograph seemed to call for a follow-up, so now that you’ve had a chance to contemplate the surface of a pod produced by Matelea reticulata, the pearl milkweed vine, here’s a look at the opposite side of the same pod you saw last time. No one’s mother does a better job of packing this slender suitcase—or more accurately seedcase—than Mother Nature, as you can tell from the contents partly visible through the widening slit.

This photograph once again comes from December 3rd along Great Northern Blvd.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Another podcast

In the last post you saw a flower of the pearl milkweed vine, Matelea reticulata, and now here’s a look at the kind of pod that this species produces. Just as the flower has an interesting pattern on it, so is the pod interestingly textured, both in its surface design and its pointy protrusions. The dark spots appear to be tiny spiders, mites, or ticks (though I’m glad to say I didn’t get ticked off).

Like the previous photograph, this one comes from December 3rd along Great Northern Blvd.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Big things come in small packages: a holiday pearl

I assume most of you won’t have been given a pearl as a holiday gift this year, but with today’s post you can honestly tell people that you have, because here for the first time since last winter is a picture showing a flower of the pearl milkweed vine, Matelea reticulata. Not many flowers are green, and fewer still have a little pearly structure at their center, but this wildflower not only fits both descriptions but also bears a reticulated design that covers all but the nacreous canopy at its center.

If the post’s title uses the word small, it’s because a pearl milkweed flower is only about a half to three-quarters of an inch across (12–19 mm). With that size in mind, you can understand that the pearly structure at the flower’s hub is tiny indeed.

Marshall Enquist gives the bloom period of the pearl milkweed vine as April–July, which is too short. Geyata Ajilvsgi extends it to October, but that’s still too short, because I’ve often enough found the species flowering near the end of the year, as today’s photograph from my productive December 3rd session along Great Northern Blvd. in north-central Austin confirms.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Greenbrier vine shadows on a colorful leaf

After two pairs of flower pictures, here’s the bright leaf of a greenbrier, Smilax bona-nox, that I photographed on the Boatright Memorial Trail along Bull Creek on December 15th. Don’t you like the way the backlighting casts shadows of the acutely thorny vine onto one of its leaves? The color and patterns offer a little consolation for the many times this often-run-into plant has scratched me.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

A Clematis drummondii flower as it opens

Here’s a slightly later stage in the opening of a Clematis drummondii flower that I photographed along Great Northern Blvd. in north-central Austin on December 3. This view also lets you see that the leaflets in the vine’s compound leaves are shaped somewhat like dinosaur footprints.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman