Pink-tinged snow

On September 25 I drove approximately that many miles north to Tejas Camp in Williamson County. I went there not only to check out the river primroses but also to search for some good snow-on-the-mountain plants (Euphorbia marginata) to balance the snow-on-the-prairie I’d already documented for this year. I succeeded in both quests. While snow-on-the-mountain is poetically named for its prominently white-margined bracts, they occasionally show a pink tinge, as parts of the plants in both of today’s photographs confirm. I noticed that in some of the inflorescences the little elliptical structures called nectar glands that start out a pale olive green had turned tan or even conspicuously red. And it’s time for a reminder that the plant’s actual flowers are restricted to the small rough areas that those nectar glands surround.

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Free speech has increasingly been coming under attack in the United States and the Western world in general. If that troubles you, as it does me, I invite you to watch a good 76-minute discussion of the topic by free-speech supporters Matt Taibbi, Nadine Strossen, Amna Khalid, and Nico Perrino.

© 2021 Steven Schwartzman