Velvet gaura

It’s been a few years since I showed you a flower spike of velvet gaura—long enough for the botanical name to have changed from Gaura parviflora and Gaura mollis to Oenothera curtiflora (in fact every Gaura species is now an Oenothera). Some people find this plant weedy and refer to it as velvetweed; me, I’m happy to encounter it and photograph it. One reason, not apparent here, is the plant’s downiness, which was clear in a portrait from 2011. Today’s takes are from May 5th at the edge of the parking lot from which I walked a short distance to photograph dense wildflowers along MoPac shortly before mowers destroyed them. Fortunately whatever company maintains the land around the parking lot did only narrow mowing at its edges and left the wildflowers intact. And speaking of narrow mowing, how about the way the first photographed is cropped? It’s a good example of point 6 in About My Techniques.

On the gaura plant shown below I found two stilt bugs, probably in the genus Jalysus. The red-orange flowers in the background were firewheels, Gaillardia pulchella, happily ubiquitous at this time of year here, and the pale violet ones were mealy blue sage, Salvia farinacea. More about those two next time.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman