From both sides now

The sunflower you saw last time wasn’t Helianthus annuus, the common sunflower that grows across much of North America. No, it was Simsia calva, known as a bush sunflower, and today’s photograph from below shows some of the differences between the two. I’d say the single most distinguishing feature is the brown veins on the underside of the bush sunflower’s otherwise yellow rays. That brown coloration isn’t visible from above, as you can confirm by looking back at yesterday’s photo.

As with the previous picture, this one comes from December 3 along Great Northern Blvd. in north-central Austin. Also like the last photograph, this one was taken outdoors with no artificial backdrop of any sort. The morning was heavily overcast, in fact even misty~drizzly, so I had to use a flash. The nearest vegetation beyond the sunflower was far enough away that the flash had essentially no effect on it and it remained lost in the relative darkness of distance.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman