The median with more than the median amount of wildflowers

It’s hard to stop showing colorful pictures from the median of US 290 east of TX 21 as it looked on April 6th. Of the three main wildflowers—bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis), Texas dandelions (Pyrrhopappus pauciflorus), and Indian paintbrushes (Castilleja indivisa)—different colors predominated in different parts of the median. The paintbrushes that constituted the largest share in the top view put in only a minor appearance below, where bluebonnets and Texas dandelions marshaled* roughly equal forces in the field of floral fracas.

* Here’s the history of marshal that Merriam Webster gives:

Although most French words are derived from Latin, a few—among them marshal—are Germanic. In the last centuries of the Roman Empire, the Germanic Franks occupied what is now France and left behind a substantial linguistic legacy, including what became medieval French mareschal. Mareschal came from a Frankish compound noun corresponding to Old High German marahscal, composed of marah, meaning “horse” (Old English mearh, with a feminine form mere, whence English mare), and scalc, meaning “servant” (Old English scealc). The original marshal was a servant in charge of horses, but by the time the word was borrowed from French into English in the 14th century, it referred primarily to a high royal official.

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

White prickly poppies in the wind

The wind blew incessantly on April 6th. When my first photo stop came on US 77 south of Lexington in Lee County, I set a shutter speed of 1/500 of a second to stop the motion of these white prickly poppies (Argemone albiflora).

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman