Probably the most expansive wildflower displays we’ve ever seen

 

On the morning of April 23rd we set out on what ended up being an 8-hour, 250-mile wildflower quest west from Austin through parts of the counties of Travis, Burnet, Llano, and Mason. Whereas the colonies of dense wildflowers you’ve seen here from Pflugerville covered undeveloped lots of up to a few acres, and similarly for recent wildflower-covered cemeteries; and whereas the large bluebonnet colonies in the four Bends extended to several times that size, the wildflower displays we witnessed on April 23rd went on for miles at a stretch, and not just at the edges of the roads but often way back into the adjacent land, sometimes as far in as we could see. The opening landscape is from FM 152 in far eastern Mason County; it marks the farthest point west we reached on our trip.

 

 

The second picture is from RM 152 at the western edge of Llano County, and the third from Llano County Road 106. The red flowers that predominated in most of the places we visited appear to be Gaillardia amblyodon, know as maroon Indian blanket (though I would go with red for the color). The white flowers are lazy daisies, Aphanostephus skirrhobasis; the yellow are brown bitterweed, Helenium amarum var. badium.

 

 

 

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 “The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech and religion. In this field, every person must be his own watchman for truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us.” — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, 1945.

 

 

© 2024 Steven Schwartzman