Missouri violet

After taking the previous post’s March 2nd picture from a high point along the northern end of Spicewood Springs Rd., I went down into the woods and worked my way over to where the large sycamore trees were. Because the view from up above has been increasingly obscured in recent years by higher and higher vegetation in the foreground, I hoped for better pictures of the sycamores from down below. The ones I got were so-so, not as good as what you saw last time, but while tromping about in the lowlands I found something I hadn’t seen in Austin since 2007: some Missouri violet flowers, Viola missouriensis. Here you see one that had sprung up close to a fallen sycamore leaf. Notice how the shadows on the leaf loosely mimic the markings on the flower.

In spite of being called Missouri violet, this wildflower is native in plenty of other states, as you can confirm from the USDA map.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman