Paloverde tree with great wispy clouds

Parkinsonia aculeata; Roy G. Guerrero Park; December 21, 2020.

© 2021 Steven Schwartzman

Paloverde by dusk and day

Four years ago this evening, dusk was approaching by the time we arrived in Phoenix’s South Mountain Park, which is the largest municipal park in the United States. As sunlight faded, I used flash to photograph a paloverde tree (Parkinsonia microphylla or florida; there are two local species, and I don’t know which this was). The flash brought out the greenness of the tree’s branches—in fact palo verde means ‘green branch’ in Spanish. The next morning, on our way out of Phoenix, we stopped at South Mountain Park again. It seems that when paloverde branches die, they tend to turn orange.

We learned that paloverdes sometimes act as “incubators” for saguaros (Carnegiea gigantea), giving some degree of protection to the young ones until they get established.

Likewise for barrel cacti.

Did you know that our use of cactus to designate plants like these last two resulted from a mistake? It did. The Latin word cactus, from Greek kaktos, referred to a type of artichoke. Linnaeus, the great 18th-century scientific namer of species, understandably yet mistakenly thought that the spiny plants we now call cacti were akin to the prickly artichoke.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

 

Paloverde parts

From August 25th at Mopac and US 183, here are the ever cheery flowers of a paloverde tree (Parkinsonia aculeata). I also did a closeup of one of the tree’s drying pods.

Below is a minimalist view of a paloverde leaf whose curling tip had turned reddish.

And here’s an unrelated quotation for today:
“Sensible people don’t grieve over what they don’t have but rejoice in what they do have.”
— Epictetus, Fragments.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Flowering paloverde tree and clouds

On May 29th I stopped along Anderson Mill Rd. at Windy Ridge Rd., having never taken pictures there before. What prompted me to pull over was a flowering paloverde tree (Parkinsonia aculeata) that I wanted to play off against the moving (in both senses) clouds that had been with us all morning.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Paloverde after sunset

Late in the afternoon on October 17th we checked into our hotel in southern Phoenix and then went out to see what we could in the brief time left before sundown. With a goal of this trip being to go where we hadn’t gone on previous visits to certain areas, I drove to South Mountain Park, a place I’d wanted to visit during our 2014 trip but hadn’t managed to get to. This turned out to be a popular park for evening hiking, even during the week. By the time we found a parking space and walked along a trail for a few minutes, little natural light was left for pictures, so I added flash to the mix. The resulting photograph isn’t how anyone present saw the scene, but I like the effect and hope you do too.

The tree, by the way, is a paloverde. I later learned that there are two similar local species, Parkinsonia microphylla and Parkinsonia florida; I’m not sure which one this was.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

Wispy paloverde tree

This post’s title is redundant because paloverde trees, Parkinsonia aculeata, are wispy by nature. I took this picture of one near BMC Drive in Cedar Park* last year on August 5th. Now it’s the final day in August this year and I’m still seeing paloverde flowers here and there around town.

Fresh petals and old coexist in this cheery closeup from June 3rd near Seton Center Drive:

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* Cedar Park is a large suburb on the north side of Austin. When I moved to Austin in 1976, Cedar Park had about 2,000 inhabitants. The estimated population now is 65,000 and the town is still growing at a good clip.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

Paloverde tree in full flower

By mid-May the paloverde trees around Austin had begun to flower. I took this bright picture of a Parkinsonia aculeata along N. Lamar Blvd. on May 16th.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman

Feathers on paloverde

Click for better clarity.

A different sort of “fur” that I noticed at the Arbor Walk Pond on December 4, 2013, was a small clump of feathers caught on a young paloverde tree, Parkinsonia aculeata. The feathers presumably came from one of the ducks or other waterfowl that frequent the pond.

A catkin fallen onto a paloverde thorn

As I walked along a tributary of Bull Creek on March 15th I noticed a tall tree with catkins on many of its upper branches. (Sorry, I don’t know what kind of tree it was.) Then I noticed that a few of the catkins had fallen onto the ground near where I was standing, and on the way down one had even gotten snagged on the thorn of a paloverde tree, Parkinsonia aculeata, where it was hanging incongruously. A lot of things in nature wind up, at least temporarily, in places that do them no good. I’ve been in such places myself.

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman

Paloverde pod

Speaking of a paloverde tree, Parkinsonia aculeata, whose green branches and leaves served as an out-of-focus background yesterday for a colorful prairie flameleaf sumac, Rhus lanceolata, here’s a closeup showing the tip of one of the paloverde’s slender, hanging pods. The flameleaf sumac is back to serving as a background, one even more happily out of focus than in the view from two posts ago. Call this minimalism when it comes to composition but maximalism when it comes to color.

As was true for the last two pictures, this hue-topian vision comes from a visit on November 20 to an undeveloped property behind Seton Northwest Hospital, whose name tells you what part of Austin it and I are in. (It’s common for “he and I” or “she and I” to serve as the subject of a clause, but “it and I” is rare. I imagine that’s because “it” is normally non-human while “I” is human, and we don’t expect a member of one of those realms to be coordinated with a member of the other realm.)

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman