Return to Lake Somerville State Park

 

On March 11th we returned to the Birch Creek Unit at Lake Somerville State Park for the first time since we’d visited a year earlier. In contrast to the later dramatic view in yesterday’s post, the clouds had been soft and white. The yellow flowers are Senecio ampullaceus, known as Texas groundsel or Texas ragwort. The others are bluebonnets, Lupinus texensis.

 

 

If clouds be dreams, what pleasant slumbers.

 

© 2023 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

Whitebonnets

 

A couple of decades ago I noticed how common it is for purple wildflowers to have white variants. A colony of bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis) in Round Rock on April 2nd presented me with one whitebonnet, shown above. On April 6th at the Nails Creek Unit of Lake Somerville State Park I doubled my fun by mostly lining up one whitebonnet with another. I’ve been finding more of them this year than usual.

 

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

Bluebonnets at Lake Somerville

 

Never having been to Lake Somerville State Park, on April 6th we drove the hour and a half it took to get there. We went “cold,” which is to say not knowing whether we’d find worthwhile wildflowers in that region. Find good ones we did. Both of today’s photographs show that some of the bluebonnets at the park’s Birch Creek Unit on the north shore of the lake extended close to the water.

 

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman