American beautyberry fruit clusters

There’s nothing to carp at in the ripe fruits of Callicarpa americana, called American beautyberry. I found this bush along the upper reaches of Bull Creek on September 2nd. Light filtering through the surrounding trees kept shifting with the leaves as they moved in the breeze, making it hard for me to catch all six fruit clusters lit up at the same time.

© Steven Schwartzman

Advertisements

A red theme

Wanderers through countryside with lots of prickly pears (Opuntia engelmannii var. lindheimeri) know that the cactus often attracts certain bugs. This is one of those, Narnia femorata, on a tuna, or fruit of the prickly pear cactus, in the Zilker Nature Preserve seven years ago today. The bug is a nymph in one of its early instars, which are the developmental stages that the larva of an insect passes through. Click below if you’d like a closer look at the bug as it appeared in a different frame.

Although Texas in the summer of 2011 was suffering one of its worst droughts in decades, when I recently looked back at my archive for August 12th of that year I saw that I went photographing in four locations that day and ended up with hundreds of pictures, like this one along Scenic Drive of ripe snailseed fruit (Cocculus carolinus):

I also found from looking at my archive that I went out taking pictures on 19 of the 31 days in that torrid August of 2011. You could say that I lived up to the motto of the USPS (United States Photographic Service): “Neither heat nor drought nor sun nor sweat stays these intrepid image gatherers from the due documentation of their appointed rounds.”

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

The end of winter

Today, March 20th, marks the official end of winter this year. Nature in Austin hadn’t waited that long. The photograph above, taken six days ago at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, shows a possumhaw tree (Ilex decidua) that had largely greened out while still densely laden with the bright red fruits it wore all winter. A clear blue sky pleasantly set off the other two colors. Aiming upward near midday let sunlight transluce the new leaves.

(Not long ago you saw a landscape view from Valentine’s Day showing a possumhaw in its winter form, which is to say totally leafless.)

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

Possumhaw fruits brightening a misty morning

Several times the bright red fruits on a bare possumhaw tree (Ilex decidua) had caught my eye along the route that lets traffic heading southeast on the access road of US 183 merge onto the southbound access road of Mopac. On this year’s cool and misty Valentine’s Day morning I finally celebrated the red by parking as close as I could to the possumhaw, walking across several lanes of intermittently coming cars, and then stepping onto the ground beyond, there to wield my camera. Today’s picture gives no hint of the noisy traffic zooming by less than a hundred feet away on Mopac. Mixed in with the possumhaw are some bare branches of flameleaf sumac (Rhus lanceolata). The greenery in the lower right is from a related bush with the apt name evergreen sumac (Rhus virens).

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

The squirrels are at it again

What the squirrels are at again is eating some of the little red fruits from the yaupon trees (Ilex vomitoria) in Austin. Here’s a piece of the action right outside my window on January 19th. Notice that while this squirrel held on to the trunk of an Ashe juniper (Juniperus ashei) with its right paw it used its left paw to pull a cluster of yaupon fruits against its mouth so it could bite one off.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

The ice storm of 2007

On January 17, 2007, Austin had a rare ice storm. As a photographer who lives in the warm climate of central Texas and who much prefers heat to cold, I was nevertheless happy for a chance to try my hand at getting pictures of the sort I’ve envied northern nature photographers for. To that end, I dressed in a sweater, gloves, thigh-high waterproof boots, and a well-padded winter jacket with a hood, and carefully walked the half-mile downhill to Great Hills Park. There I found, among other crystalline wonders, the branches of a poverty weed tree, Baccharis neglecta, bowed down by the weight of the ice encrusting them:

Look more closely at this abstract view of ice encasing lichens on a branch:

Ice did nothing to dim, and may even have enhanced the saturation of, the red fruits on a possumhaw tree, Ilex decidua. (You recently saw a non-iced view of possumhaw fruits from much farther away.)

And oh the retributive delight of all those who suffer in January from allergies set off by the pollen of Ashe junipers, Juniperus ashei, to find the twigs of that tree smothered in ice:

More nice ice next time.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

Possumhaw possibilities

Given the persistent overcast here recently, I’d been waiting for a sunny day to go out and exploit the photographic possibilities of a possumhaw tree. Yesterday morning my chance came and I took it. The scientific name Ilex decidua tells you that this holly is deciduous. That loss of leaves in winter makes it easy to see the clusters of fruit on the female trees and also easy for those red-orange fruits to contrast with the bright blue of the clear sky beyond them.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman