Another way-out-of-season wildflower

Far outnumbering the lone way-out-of season bluebonnet I photographed along Mopac on December 9th were the many Engelmann daisies (Engelmannia peristenia) on the same embankment. I saw plenty of these flowers, along with lots of other Engelmann daisy plants that looked fresh and healthy but hadn’t yet produced any flowers. Marshall Enquist gives the normal blooming season for the species as March through July, so these Engelmann daisies were only a little less of a rarity in December than the bluebonnet. This season’s first good frost on December 11th apparently didn’t hurt the Engelmann daisies because I’m still seeing plenty of them flowering along Mopac.

Both pictures show the typical concave (pinched-in) configuration of the ray florets as a bud opens.

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The other day we watched the film Makala, which means ‘charcoal’ in Swahili. The documentary follows Kasongo, a rural Congolese man who ekes out a bare living laboriously cutting down trees, turning the wood into charcoal, and trekking that charcoal to a town to sell it. If you want to appreciate how good we have it in first-world countries, watch Makala. To learn more about the movie, you can read a review by Roger Ebert.

© 2021 Steven Schwartzman