Wildfires and wildflowers

Moved to action by some timely photographs on the internet, on May 25th I drove an hour west from Austin to Inks Lake State Park, where dense and expansive colonies of coreopsis were the attraction.

A wildfire in July 2018 may have cleared the way for the coreopsis that throve this spring, setting up quite a striking contrast between the fresh flowers and the burned, dead trees. On the other hand, coreopsis and other wildflowers also covered tracts that fire may not have reached.

In the picture above, the red flowers are Indian blankets (Gaillardia pulchella) and the pink ones are meadow pinks (Sabatia campestris). Below are more meadow pinks, along with a few holdover Indian paintbrushes (Castilleja indivisa); I say “holdover” because most paintbrushes ended their season a month ago.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman