Before and after Inks Lake State Park
On April 5th we drove an hour west to Inks Lake State Park. Even before we’d quite arrived, at the intersection of TX 29 and Park Road 4 the dense wildflowers by the sides of those two roads warranted stopping. Adjacent parts of the roadside strips often looked rather different depending on which wildflowers dominated each area. The round, mostly red flower heads appear to be Gaillardia amblyodon, a different species from the familiar Indian blanket. The upright wildflowers with red-orange tops are Indian paintbrush, Castilleja indivisa. The yellow flower heads with dark centers are brown bitterweed, Helenium amarum var. badium.
And look at the way the parasitic plant called dodder (Cuscuta sp.), which has been likened to a tangle of yellow angel-hair pasta, had attacked one portion of a bluebonnet colony (Lupinus texensis).
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Two people together have foursight.
© 2024 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
such a difference
beth
April 23, 2024 at 4:39 AM
While some fields of wildflowers here are monocultures, often different species dominate in different portions. Even when the mix of species is the same, the ratios among them can vary a lot from area to another.
Steve Schwartzman
April 23, 2024 at 6:28 AM
I love the mixed wildflower fields, so much texture and color variety.
I’m not familiar with dodder. Does it seed out prolifically?
Tina
April 23, 2024 at 2:09 PM
Speaking of mixed wildflower fields, we went out as far as Llano County today and saw mile after mile of densely mixed wildflowers, probably more than ever before. What an experience! On the way home we passed the very intersection featured in this post. It looked okay, but not as good as three weeks ago, one reason being that the bluebonnets had faded.
Dodder produces many tiny flowers, so I assume many seeds follow. Here’s an article about the genus.
Steve Schwartzman
April 23, 2024 at 5:47 PM
Your wildflower meadows are endlessly enchanting. One hopes they would be endless.
I can’t help but wonder if foursight equals foresight.
tanjabrittonwriter
April 24, 2024 at 9:20 PM
We were out for 8 hours yesterday and made a 250-mile circuit west of Austin. The effort was worth it, as we drove past mile after mile of dense displays of wildflowers along state and county roads. And the flowers were by no means just by the roadside: often they extended well into the properties bordering the roads, sometimes even extending away from the roads as far as we could see. I don’t remember ever seeing any Texas wildflower display to rival it.
As for the aphorism, you know how I like to play with words. And now I’m reminded of German Vorsicht, of which Wiktionary gives this history: “Chiefly a backformation from vorsichtig, from Middle High German vorsihtec, vürsihtec, from Old High German foresihtig, derived from foresiht, a calque of Latin providentia and provisio. By surface analysis, vor- + Sicht. Doublet of Vorsehung. Although the noun must underlie the adjective, the former is not attested again (after Notker) before the 15th century; it remained rare until ca. 1650. Compare Dutch voorzicht, English foresight.”
Steve Schwartzman
April 24, 2024 at 9:39 PM
It’s nice to know that parts of Texas has been enjoying a bumper wildflower year. I hope the flowers have been visited by multitudes of insects, in addition to photographers.
Thank you for unraveling the origins of the word foresight and Vorsicht. I don’t think I had ever thought it through, but when one sees the words pro-videntia, fore-sight, and Vor-sicht listed together, the derivation and meaning make perfect sense.
tanjabrittonwriter
April 25, 2024 at 9:56 PM
Yes, I’ve seen plenty of insects going about their inadvertent pollination. The large number of flowers presupposes a lesser though still large number of insects, as one of the latter can pollinate many of the former.
I’ve long been aware that English, and Latin before it, has many “holes,” by which I mean the non-occurrence of compounds that have a “right” to exist but don’t. Latin had the compound revidēre, meaning literally ‘to see again,’ offshoots of which ultimately gave English the words review and revise. But while Latin had the predecessors of English provident and evident, it apparently didn’t have the compound that would have given English revident as the opposite of provident.
Steve Schwartzman
April 26, 2024 at 4:42 AM
“Two people together have foursight.” 😎
Alessandra Chaves
April 24, 2024 at 9:46 PM
😎😎
Steve Schwartzman
April 24, 2024 at 9:55 PM
Gaillardia amblyodon is my favorite Gaillardia species. I’ve only seen it in the hill country, and where it appears it does seem to form expansive colonies. As for the brown bitterweed, I always laugh at the word for the variety: badium. I’ve always assumed that it was a half-humorous reference to the ‘bitter’ nature of the plant.
When I lived in Liberia, a pet dog at our compound had little black dots above its eyes. The Liberians always called it “that dog, him who have four eyes.”
shoreacres
April 27, 2024 at 7:26 AM
My first encounter with Gaillardia amblyodon took place in Bastrop years ago, so that’s the area I normally associate the species with. This month I’ve been finding large quantities of what seems to be Gaillardia amblyodon west of Austin, beginning with the Burnet County location in this post. This past week I saw huge amounts of what seems to be the same species across Llano County and into Mason County. The problem for me is that neither the USDA nor BONAP shows the species in any of those counties. Some years ago a biologist told me that Gaillardia pulchella is highly variable. That makes me wonder whether what I took for Gaillardia amblyodon might be a redder than normal strain of Gaillardia pulchella. If what I saw really was Gaillardia amblyodon, then the range maps need to be updated.
It’s understandable that there’s some cross-language interference with badium. An online Latin dictionary translates the adjective as ‘brown, chestnutcolored,’ and notes that the word was rare and used only of horses. The equine reference may entitle your imagination to go galloping off and even enter the canine realm.
Steve Schwartzman
April 27, 2024 at 8:44 AM
The wildflowers sure are putting on a display. That dodder seems like a nasty .. I hadn’t heard of it before
Julie@frogpondfarm
April 27, 2024 at 3:26 PM
Yes, we’ve been having a wildflower bonanza, as posts here will keep showing.
Unfortunately some dodder has made its way over to you.
Steve Schwartzman
April 27, 2024 at 3:34 PM
Oh dear I didn’t know that .. not good news
Julie@frogpondfarm
April 27, 2024 at 3:36 PM