Crinkled, take 2
A few posts back I wondered about crinkled flowers and showed a picture of one, fringed puccoon. Now here’s another, southern dewberry, Rubus trivialis. This photograph, which leans toward chiaroscuro, is from Great Hills Park on March 25th, but I could have taken pictures of dewberry flowers in a slew of places around Austin from late March till now.
© 2015 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
Beautiful. Makes me think of a whirling dervish. One might feel like whirling if one tried to pick a handful of the dewberry plant without hand protection.
Gallivanta
April 7, 2015 at 6:02 AM
I can tell you from experience that it’s hard to pick dewberries. If you use thick enough gloves to keep the prickles out of your skin, you find it difficult to handle the berries. In spite of that, a few years ago Eve and I managed to pick a large amount from a dense group that we discovered.
Steve Schwartzman
April 7, 2015 at 9:07 PM
Gloves are troublesome like that. Do you find that the berries are all the sweeter for the thorns?
Gallivanta
April 7, 2015 at 9:41 PM
That’s a philosophical question, but I’ll give an answer that’s down-to-earth, like dewberries themselves: if the berries aren’t all the sweeter, we add some vanilla ice cream.
Steve Schwartzman
April 7, 2015 at 9:46 PM
A very pragmatic solution.
Gallivanta
April 7, 2015 at 9:51 PM
Kudos to you for getting close enough to capture this beautiful image, and for being able to isolate it. I suspect it was a stickier situation than with, say, the bluebonnet.
I was thinking about dewberries the other day, pondering whether the fruit truly was a berry. That’s when I learned about drupelets, and found the explanation for the white drupelets I sometimes see on berries around here.
shoreacres
April 7, 2015 at 6:32 AM
I, too, have seen white drupelets, but until I read your linked article I had no idea what caused them.
If a fruit is composed of four drupelets can we speak of quadruplets?
Steve Schwartzman
April 7, 2015 at 9:10 PM
It certainly might lift some druping spirits.
shoreacres
April 7, 2015 at 9:11 PM
That’s a spirited reply.
Steve Schwartzman
April 7, 2015 at 9:27 PM
Oh boy, that’s stunning!
photoleaper
April 7, 2015 at 10:26 AM
These flowers are quite common here, but I think most people don’t take such a close look.
Steve Schwartzman
April 7, 2015 at 9:16 PM
I enjoy the finer details of plants and flowers – there is so much more to see!
photoleaper
April 7, 2015 at 10:05 PM
I’m with you, and I use my macro lens more often than any of my other lenses.
Steve Schwartzman
April 7, 2015 at 10:08 PM
Lovely photo.
Raewyn's Photos
April 7, 2015 at 2:07 PM
Tomorrow’s will be a whole lot closer to you.
Steve Schwartzman
April 7, 2015 at 9:17 PM
That’s a passel of anthers there.
Steve Gingold
April 8, 2015 at 4:12 AM
It is. Did you know that the word passel is a variant of parcel? Maybe I should wrap these stamens up and send them to you.
Steve Schwartzman
April 8, 2015 at 8:00 AM
ha! i enjoyed reading the thread, which is longer than when i read it yesterday. i followed linda’s link yesterday about the white drupes = interesting… and i thought i left a comment, but it’s not here.. there are two types of ‘mora’ in the cloudforest of mindo… one is a very-small blackberry with very thorny vines.. the other is plump and much larger with more of a bright reddish-purple color. both are packed with flavor!
this image didn’t load from a search query, but i think it will show one of the two mentioned above:
https://playamart.wordpress.com/2013/10/02/duds/p1840345-mindo-mora-butterfly/
Playamart - Zeebra Designs
April 8, 2015 at 6:12 PM
I’ve occasionally left comments on people’s blogs that have gone into the void, and I’ve seen other people’s comments to the same effect.
Thanks for the link to your picture of mora fruits. They look a lot like the dewberry fruits we have in Texas, which grow on vines with lots of little prickles on them. Once ripe, the fruits are sweet, and I’ve sometimes snacked on them when I’m out in the field. As you read in my earlier comment, a couple of years ago we (carefully) gathered several pounds.
Steve Schwartzman
April 8, 2015 at 8:26 PM
Yet another fascinating flower that is new to my experience. Thanks for continuing to expand my levels of awareness!
krikitarts
April 8, 2015 at 11:58 PM
You’re welcome. This species is common in Texas and can be found in much of the Southeast. It doesn’t make it as far north as Nebraska, but if you check
http://www.wildflower.org/plants/search.php?search_field=Rubus&newsearch=true&family=Rosaceae
you’ll see that there are dozens of species of Rubus in the United States, and I’ll bet there are some that do grow in Nebraska. Happy hunting.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2015 at 6:04 AM
It’s very beautiful, isn’t it? I know of a ceramicist who makes flowers that look like this and affixes them to her bowls.
melissabluefineart
April 9, 2015 at 10:11 AM
Small and common but well worth a close look, says I. Do you know if your ceramicist models her flowers after real species?
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2015 at 11:36 AM