A drizzle-drazzled droplet-dazzled view of a straggler daisy
Click for larger size and therefore more detail.
The diminutive plant known as the straggler daisy, Calyptocarpus vialis, forms a natural ground cover in some parts of Austin. Here from the morning of March 17th in Great Hills Park is the little flower head of a straggler daisy with drizzle on it, along with much more sparkling drizzle on the spiderweb around it. To give you a sense of scale, I’ll add that a flower head in this species typically runs about a quarter of an inch (6mm) in diameter.
© 2016 Steven Schwartzman
Say that 5 times really fast.
oneowner
March 30, 2016 at 6:28 AM
Along those lines, I imagined it as part of a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song.
Steve Schwartzman
March 30, 2016 at 7:14 AM
I like the name. Big name for such a small flower and plant.
Jim Ruebush
March 30, 2016 at 6:51 AM
To the saying that big things come in small packages you’ve added the notion that little things can come with big names.
Steve Schwartzman
March 30, 2016 at 7:18 AM
Is this the plant I’ve been calling “horse herb”? One gardening lady told me “it’s a weed” – but I actually like it, prefer it over grass. 🙂
Stephanie
March 30, 2016 at 7:04 AM
Yes, I’ve seen this plant referred to in some sources as horse herb. As a substitute for the grasses normally used in lawns, it requires less maintenance and produces more-noticeable flowers.
Steve Schwartzman
March 30, 2016 at 7:20 AM
You might enjoy this fact sheet from a Native Plant Society chapter. I’ve had it in my files since I first met this plant, and was trying to figure out what it could be.
shoreacres
March 30, 2016 at 7:41 AM
That would be this fact sheet.
shoreacres
March 30, 2016 at 7:42 AM
The fact that your fact sheet mentions this species growing as far south as central America makes me wonder if I ever saw it when I lived in Honduras so many years ago.
Steve Schwartzman
March 30, 2016 at 7:55 AM
I first met this one back in the days when I still considered everything not in a flower bed a “weed.” In fact, it surely was one of the first wild flowers I photographed. I first learned to call it lawn flower, and then was introduced to its other names.
Whether by chance or by choice, this is quite common here as a ground cover, but I’ve never seen it looking as elegant as in your photo. The droplets look like a scattering of diamonds. That made me wonder if there was any plant with diamante in its name. The only one I found with a quick browse lives in Chile.
shoreacres
March 30, 2016 at 7:52 AM
In spite of Thoreau’s admonition that in wildness is the preservation of the world, many people consider many wild plants, particularly those without showy flowers, to be weeds. I think straggler daisy colonies in your area (or any other) are much more likely to be there naturally than by choice. We had a fair amount of it growing naturally at our former house, and I’ve begun noticing some at our current house.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be showing one and possibly two more pictures with prominent water droplets.
I didn’t search for diamante but I did find some plants with diamond in their names:
http://www.wildflower.org/plants/search.php?search_field=diamond&newsearch=true&family=Acanthaceae
Steve Schwartzman
March 30, 2016 at 8:07 AM
The Oenothera rhombipetala, diamond petal primrose, is a beauty. Even without the drizzle and droplets, its photos left me be-drazzled.
shoreacres
March 30, 2016 at 8:46 AM
I wonder if you might ever have been be-drazzled by it in Iowa, where I see it grows natively:
http://plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=OERH
Steve Schwartzman
March 30, 2016 at 8:58 AM
Lovely image Steve .. And such a tiny flower
Julie@frogpondfarm
March 31, 2016 at 2:58 AM
Another instance of big things coming in small packages, Julie.
Steve Schwartzman
March 31, 2016 at 6:48 AM
[…] patches of ground blanketed with drizzle-bejeweled spiderwebs like the ones you saw last time surrounding a straggler daisy. Some of the webs had a noticeably dark funnel, and in one of those I glimpsed a spider waiting […]
Bejeweled | Portraits of Wildflowers
March 31, 2016 at 4:55 AM
Bejeweled beauty 🙂
Sarah Longes - Mirador Design
April 1, 2016 at 3:01 AM
Alliteratedly so.
Steve Schwartzman
April 1, 2016 at 7:52 AM
Stunned into just a few words 😉 I only figured it all out from reading your words about the cobweb! Absolute magic. Just love seeing serendipity at work in nature 🙂
Sarah Longes - Mirador Design
April 2, 2016 at 6:34 PM
Yay, magic! Being magically stunned is all right with me.
Steve Schwartzman
April 2, 2016 at 10:21 PM
Stupefied!
Sarah Longes - Mirador Design
April 3, 2016 at 6:22 PM
After stunned and stupefied, the next stu- that popped into my head was studious. Many of the things we study are indeed astonishing. The word historian in me can’t resist pointing out that stun, astound, and astonish are etymologically just variants of the same word.
Steve Schwartzman
April 3, 2016 at 8:48 PM
Stupefied came to mind as JK Rowling used the word Stupefy as the magical incantation to stun and immobilise an opponent. She was rather good at word play herself as a writer! Diagon Alley was always my favourite of hers 😉
Sarah Longes - Mirador Design
April 4, 2016 at 6:25 PM
You’ve reminded me that when I was a child there was a comic strip called Alley Oop:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alley_Oop
The name seems to have been a cross-language pun, with the original presumably being French “Allez, hop,” an imperative meaning something like “Get going now.”
Steve Schwartzman
April 4, 2016 at 7:03 PM
It’s a phrase I remember being used a lot when you were getting onto something! Like a horse. My mum used to say it a lot but I now wonder if it’s something she learned from her own parents or from the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band!! I have never heard it said by a French speaker though, so I guess it’s a bit of a dated term over there 😉 Allez allez is the usual. Another one my mum used to say was “hop to it” usually in reference to chores!
Sarah Longes - Mirador Design
April 5, 2016 at 5:54 PM
We can say “Hop to it” over here too, but not the “Hop it” I’ve heard in British movies that seems to mean “Get out of here.”
I searched and found examples, including recent ones, of “allez hop” in French:
https://www.google.ca/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=%22allez+hop%22&tbs=,bkv:p&num=100
Like you, I’ve heard “allez allez”.
Steve Schwartzman
April 5, 2016 at 9:49 PM
They looked like text books or something! Yeah, hop it is a polite way to tell someone to p!$$ off. If I said it to any of today’s youth loitering in the village with the only intent of being annoying I’d probably be laughed at for using archaic (to them) English, followed by a string of less polite modern phraseology 😉
Sarah Longes - Mirador Design
April 6, 2016 at 5:11 PM
The dewy sheet web adds an awful lot of interest to this already interesting little flower. I’ve seen a few posts on Facebook of early flowers here in the northeast, but have yet to see a wild one for myself. Daffs, croci, and a few other bulbs but no wild things.
Steve Gingold
April 2, 2016 at 6:07 PM
“In wildness is the preservation of the world,” wrote Thoreau. Your preservation should resume pretty soon now.
Steve Schwartzman
April 2, 2016 at 10:22 PM
And so says the title of the book that was my introduction to one of my favorite image makers.
Steve Gingold
April 3, 2016 at 2:12 AM
This is the book cover I remember:
http://www.wholeearthprovision.com/news/tag/eliot-porter/
Steve Schwartzman
April 3, 2016 at 5:43 AM
Yup. I’ve two copies…one is the small Sierra Club published paperback and the other is the coffee table publication.
Steve Gingold
April 3, 2016 at 7:44 AM
I think I once had a copy of the large-format edition too but I don’t know what became of it.
Steve Schwartzman
April 3, 2016 at 8:00 AM
I bought mine used. Maybe yours is on my shelf.
Steve Gingold
April 3, 2016 at 8:15 AM
And if any of your books have gone astray let me know and I’ll check my shelves.
Steve Schwartzman
April 3, 2016 at 8:22 AM
[…] I’d immediately followed up the recent consecutive posts showing drizzle drops around a straggler daisy and then around a funnel web spider, you might have thought I’d been dropped on my head. Now […]
Dropped on my head | Portraits of Wildflowers
April 14, 2016 at 5:09 AM
[…] dark bird winging west. Oh, the world of illusions we live in. Casting the magic shadow spell was a straggler daisy plant, Calyptocarpus […]
Shadow as an emblem of a bird in flight | Portraits of Wildflowers
September 27, 2018 at 4:47 AM