Bushy bluestem and bald cypress

Click for better quality.

On November 18th I made my first visit to a natural area called Jacob’s Well in Wimberley, a town about an hour southwest of Austin. One thing that caught my attention was this seed head of bushy bluestem, Andropogon glomeratus, that had gotten caught as well. Its captor was a low branch of a bald cypress tree, Taxodium distichum, whose needle-like leaves were turning the rich orange-brown they take on in the fall.

To compose this picture I lay down and aimed the camera mostly upward. That accounts for what may strike you as a strange perspective, but it’s the view that many animals walking on the ground would get of the same scene. If you want to orient yourself, be aware that the tree’s white trunk, which was actually vertical, intersects the lower border of the picture about a third of the way over from the right. The non-traditional angle at which I took the picture foreshortened the trunk and made it appear to be leaning.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman