Lindheimer’s senna

Walking along the North Walnut Creek Trail on September 19th I glimpsed some bright yellow flowers at a distance through the woods. Could they be my first Maximilian sunflowers for this year? No: when I hiked over to investigate I found the flowers were Lindheimer’s senna, Senna lindheimeriana, a member of the pea family.

Even close to the ground some of the senna plants were flowering.

Several senna leaflets still had morning dewdrops on them.

So did a few of the flowers.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

Shadow as an emblem of a bird in flight

Along the North Walnut Creek Trail on the morning of September 19th I looked down at a mushroom and saw a dark bird winging west. Oh, the world of illusions we live in. Casting the magic shadow spell was a straggler daisy plant, Calyptocarpus vialis.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

Pink and yellow thrills a fellow; pink and blue is pretty too.

Palafoxia callosa goes by the common name small palafoxia because at half an inch in diameter its flower heads are indeed smaller than those of other species in the genus. The background in the first photograph owes its yellow to cowpen daisies, a few of which you’ve already seen from the same September 2nd session along Lost Horizon Dr. in my Great Hills neighborhood.

Back on August 24th along the right-of-way beneath the power lines west of Morado Circle I portrayed a small palafoxia from the side so that the blue sky could be the background, as you see in the picture below. The heads in this non-composite composite species consist entirely of disk flowers; there are no ray flowers.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

Olive = juniper

On September 2nd, while walking on a streamside path along the upper reaches of Bull Creek, I stopped to photograph a butterfly that entomologists classify as Callophrys gryneus and that people call a juniper hairstreak or olive hairstreak. Although what I know about butterflies weighs less than one, it seems to me that the russet color on this individual was more saturated than average for the species.

If you’re wondering about the flowers, which I paid much less attention to than the hairstreak did because I needed to maintain my focus on the moving butterfly, they were Eupatorium serotinum, known as late boneset and late thoroughwort.

For a closer look at the butterfly, you can click on the excerpt below from a different frame to enlarge it.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

Yellow and purple

In the woods along the upper reaches of Bull Creek on September 2nd I found this bright and brightly lit flower head of a Silphium radula, known as roughstem rosinweed.

The daubs of contrasting color beyond the rosinweed came from a few flowers on a purple bindweed vine, Ipomoea cordatotriloba. Below is a side view of one of those flowers in its own right and in focus.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

American beautyberry fruit clusters

There’s nothing to carp at in the ripe fruits of Callicarpa americana, called American beautyberry. I found this bush along the upper reaches of Bull Creek on September 2nd. Light filtering through the surrounding trees kept shifting with the leaves as they moved in the breeze, making it hard for me to catch all six fruit clusters lit up at the same time.

© Steven Schwartzman

Wasp-on-the-mountain

A few weeks ago you got a close look at the inflorescence of snow-on-the-prairie. Now you’re getting a look at its sister species, snow-on-the-mountain (Euphorbia marginata). On September 2nd I’d been driving home after photographing at two other locations in northwest Austin when I spotted a few of these familiar plants and decided to stop. Once I got close, I saw that a wasp was busy working the flowers. Like some other insects I’ve seen on flowers, this one kept moving pretty quickly, so I used a high shutter speed, 1/800 of a second, to keep from ending up with a blurred image of the wasp.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

Minimalist mountains and clouds

Here’s a different take on the Kananaskis Range of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, Canada: a silhouetted view with graphic clouds beyond and above. The date was September 11, 2017.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

Not humdrum

A year ago today we headed northeast from Calgary, driving almost two hours across the great Alberta prairie.

That was our third and last visit to the area around Drumheller.

We reconfirmed that the Canadian badlands near Drumheller are anything but humdrum.

©2018 Steven Schwartzman

The Kananaskis Range

A year ago today we drove through parts of the Kananaskis Range in Alberta. Though apparently not as well known as some other sections of the Canadian Rockies, the mountains in this range are massive, and it’s hard to convey their scale in photographs. With that caveat, here are four of the peaks I photographed that the staff at Alberta Parks could give me names for.

Cat’s Ears

Mount Lorette

Mount Blane

Mount Brock

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman