Texas being Texas

In the spring Texas does wildflowers.

Prompted by reports of good sightings a little over a hundred miles from home in Cestohowa, we headed south on March 18. We began finding good things just past Seguin and even better ones after we detoured a little from our route to check out New Berlin. In fact the wildflowers were so bountiful on some of the properties in that area that we never got any farther. Sorry, Cestohowa.

We’d first stumbled on the flowerful cemetery at Christ Lutheran Church of Elm Creek in 2014, and this year proved its equal. Here’s an overview:

To my mind, every cemetery should be covered in wildflowers.

The tombstones are interesting, with the oldest ones dating from the 1800s and inscribed in German (remember, the town is New Berlin). Still, as this blog is devoted to nature, here are a couple of photographs that focus on the profuse wildflowers in their own right. The colonies were so intertwined that I was able to frame the flowers in lots of ways. The bright yellow ones are Nueces coreopsis (Coreopsis nuecensis).

The red flowers are Indian paintbrushes (Castilleja indivisa) and the others are bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis), the state’s official wildflower. You saw a closeup of one way back in early February.)

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

A new oddity

On March 10th I went back to the lot along Balcones Woods Dr. where I’d photographed the stemless evening primrose flowers you saw here not long ago. The highlight of my latest stop was a strange ten-petal anemone flower (Anemone berlandieri) that had two central fruiting columns instead of the one that’s normal.

Sometimes flower parts get doubled as part of the phenomenon called fasciation, which I’ve documented in a bunch of posts over the years, but this time I didn’t see any of the noticeable flattening or distortion or elongation that fasciation typically brings with it. To continue investigating, I returned to the site on March 16th. By then the richly colored sepals had fallen off and dried out or blown away, so I had to search for several minutes to find the plant again. While the new evidence shown below argues against fasciation, what caused the rare splitting of one seed column into two remains a mystery. (I call this conjoining rare because even a local expert like botanist Bill Carr says he’s never seen an anemone do this.)

Green

‘Tis not shamrocks but wood-sorrel (Oxalis spp.) greening the ground in our back yard on February 25th.

And if it’s more three-part green leaves ye be craving, here’s another view of southern dewberry
(Rubus trivialis), this time from February 27th in the northeast quadrant of Mopac and US 183:

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Dogwood blossoms

Ten years ago today I photographed these blossoms on a dogwood tree (Cornus florida) near the little town of Warren in far east Texas.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Pi Day

Some math-minded folks refer to today, 3/14, as Pi Day because 3.14 is the approximate value of π, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. In other words, if you could lift a diameter out of a circle, bend it to match the curvature of that circle, then lay it back down onto the circle, it would take about 3.14 such curved segments to go completely around. π is what mathematicians call a transcendental number; one consequence is that we can’t express its exact value with a terminating decimal or even a repeating decimal (as, for example, 1/8 = exactly 0.125 and 1/11 = 0.09090909…).

What’s all that got to do with this opening four-nerve daisy (Tetraneuris scaposa) that I photographed in my neighborhood four days ago? Well, 4 is a number, right? And you’ve gotta admit that the sunny yellow flower head does a good job of suggesting a circle.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Another first appearance here for a wildflower

Way back on February 18th I found a bunch of stemless evening primroses, Oenothera triloba, flowering in a lot along Balcones Woods Dr. I don’t recall ever photographing (or at least identifying) this species before, so naturally this is its first appearance here. The two things in the first photograph that look rather like chili peppers are buds. Aiming straight down is the stance I least often adopt when doing portraits in nature because so much that’s on the ground around the subject shows up and often distracts from it. In this case it seemed okay because the flower was so much brighter than the leaves and stems below it.

For the second photograph I lay down and aimed sideways to take advantage of the backlighting that rendered the flower translucent and cast the shadows of its inner parts toward me, and now also toward you.

To see the many places in the United States where this species grows, you can check out the USDA map. The scroll bar to the left of the map lets you zoom in to the county level.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Southern dewberry flower and bud

While at Mills Pond on February 24th I found my first southern dewberry flowers, Rubus trivialis, for 2019 (and I’ve continued seeing others since then). In case you’re wondering about the scale, each flower in this species is about an inch (2.5cm) across. Can you tell that this little wildflower is in the rose family?

When I got closer for a few portraits of the flowers I noticed a bud that had begun to open.

As my skin keeps confirming, southern dewberry canes (stems) are very prickly, another resemblance to rose bushes. In the lower left corner of the bud picture you get a side view of one prickle, softened not in reality but by appearing out of focus. In contrast, what look like dark red “claws” on the bud aren’t prickly. Notice also that the prominent pink in the bud has faded to a faint trace in the open flower.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Maximilian sunflowers in February!

Maximilian sunflowers (Helianthus maximiliani) are fall-blooming wildflowers—except when they decide to bloom in February. More precisely, the date was February 27th, and the place was the northeast quadrant of Mopac and US 183. In this perennial species even a plant with dead leaves was giving rise to new flowers.

In both photographs the droplets attest to a morning that had been misty and occasionally even drizzly. In fact I’d gone out hoping to photograph some fog but it had dissipated by the time I reached this site. Speaking of which, I’ve photographed Maximilian sunflowers on this plot of land in their traditional season, and I’ve also photographed common sunflowers there. It was on one of those that I took a picture of a tiny bee fly that got Freshly Pressed in just the second month of this blog way back in 2011. Maybe you’ll be freshly impressed if you take a look at it.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Discovering a new place by looking at a map

We wanted to go out walking on February 24th so I pulled up a local map on my computer screen to pick a place. As I scrolled around on the map I noticed Mills Pond in the Wells Branch community some nine miles northeast of our house. After 42 years in Austin I’d never heard of Mills Pond, even though I’ve photographed places close to it. That alone was a good reason to check it out. Here are four pictures from our visit.

A few trees were beginning to green out along the pond’s shore.

A very different color drew attention to this redbud tree (Cercis canadensis).

Look at the trees reflected in the creek leading to the lake.

Focusing on the breeze-rippled surface of the creek rather than on the tree reflections gave a different effect.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

A preternaturally svelte and icy en pointe

A preternaturally svelte and icy en pointe.

Great Hills Park; January 17, 2018.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman