Buddleja racemosa

 

Appearing here now as the second debut in two consecutive days is Buddleja racemosa, a small wildflower called wand butterflybush. Local botanist Bill Carr notes that it is “occasional in our area, usually growing from pits or fractures in limestone exposed on canyon walls, cliff faces, or steep rocky slopes.” Sure enough, that’s where I’ve always seen it. What I haven’t ever seen is a butterfly on or even near one, so I don’t get the vernacular name. Wikipedia notes that this little plant is endemic to the Edwards Plateau in Texas and adds that the species is not known to be in cultivation.

Today’s portraits, both from the edge of a limestone ledge overlooking Bull Creek on July 12th, offer different takes on the subject. In the top picture, a broad aperture and the resulting shallow depth of field let me turn the out-of-focus creek and rock into a soft background of pastel colors. In the second photograph I used flash and stopped down to f/25, thereby getting sharp details in the plant and trading soft colors for a stark black background.

 

 

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I call your attention to Megan McArdle’s July 14th opinion piece in the Washington Post headlined “A Berkeley professor’s Senate testimony didn’t go how the left thinks it did.”

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman