Normal and abnormal
The first picture shows a normal clasping-leaf coneflower (Dracopis amplexicaulis) among some firewheels (Gaillardia pulchella) at the Mueller Southwest Greenway on May 16th. I also found one clasping-leaf coneflower there with the kind of abnormality I’ve seen my share of in Mexican hats (Ratibida columnifera).
Those abnormalities included, on a different clasping-leaf coneflower,
ray florets sprouting atop the column normally reserved for disc florets.
© 2026 Steven Schwartzman
Milkweed in Pflugerville
The top picture shows you two flowers on an antelope horns milkweed, Asclepias asperula, in Pflugerville on May 15th. And look how a leaf of the same plant hosted a monarch butterfly caterpillar, Danaus plexippus).
Some of the milkweed plants had already produced seed pods.
Below is the spire comprising the distal part of one.
© 2026 Steven Schwartzman
Little looper, maybe muncher
By the pond at the Mueller Southwest Greenway in east Austin on May 16th I got close to a nibbled firewheel (Gaillardia pulchella) and noticed a looper on it. Whether the looper was the muncher, I don’t know. I do know the looper didn’t linger, instead moving about on the firewheel, as you see from its different stances 25 seconds apart.
© 2026 Steven Schwartzman
At the Porsche dealership
Okay, so not exactly at the Porsche dealership, but on land right next to it in the intersection between US 183 and the Capital of Texas Highway where road construction has been taking place—that’s where I spent a windy hour taking pictures of ruderal plants on May 18th. In the first portrait I looked straight down at what always strikes me as the chaotic inflorescence of a clammyweed, Polanisia dodecandra ssp. trachysperma. What I’d gone to that site to photograph was sunflowers, Helianthus annuus, whose buds and flower heads often open asymmetrically. That was true of the one below, in addition to which its outer contour beguiled me into seeing a rectangle rather than the expected circle.
© 2026 Steven Schwartzman
Yellow wildflowers in Pflugerville
The prairie in Pflugerville on May 15th played host to many wildflowers. Above is a square-bud primrose, Oenothera capillifolia subsp. capillifolia. The buds aren’t technically square, though each has four distinct ridges running along it at approximately equal intervals, so a cross-section of a bud looks roughly square. Below is an all-yellow firewheel, Gaillardia pulchella, in a colony of regularly colored ones.
© 2026 Steven Schwartzman
Two wildflowers in Pflugerville
The wildflower above is Berlandier’s flax (Linum berlandieri) and the one below is a firewheel (Gaillardia pulchella) whose central disc seems a bit lopsided. Both flowers came my way, or I theirs, on the prairie in Pflugerville on May 15th.
© 2026 Steven Schwartzman
Two experiments with water
At McKinney Falls State Park on May 12th I experimented with water. Above, a shaft of sunlight revealed how muddy a creek was after we got some rain. The large trees are bald cypresses (Taxodium distichum). Below, glistening dewdrops ornamented a spiderweb on a dry plant.
© 2026 Steven Schwartzman
Mealy blue sage and firewheels
At the Mueller Southwest Greenway in east Austin on May 16th I found a group of mealy blue sage (Salvia farinacea) amid a much larger stand of firewheels (Gaillardia pulchella).
© 2026 Steven Schwartzman
A clubtail dragonfly and a firewheel
At McKinney Falls State Park on May 12th I found a clubtail dragonfly on a firewheel seed head Gaillardia pulchella). Perhaps because of the dewdrops that covered the dragonfly, it stayed put while I took a bunch of pictures until eventually I guess I got too close and it took off.
© 2026 Steven Schwartzman
Wildflowers: the presence and the promise of a presence
The firewheels (Gaillardia pulchella) and greenthread (Thelesperma filifolium) decorating the ground on the prairie in Pflugerville grabbed much of my attention on May 13th. In a month or so that colorful carpet will be gone. A few months later, what are now only green leaves close to the ground will have risen a couple of meters and will be covered with Maximilian sunflowers (Helianthus maximiliani).
In north Austin a little later, I noticed that the leaves of common sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) seemed to overwhelm a patch of Texas thistles (Cirsium texanum). Unlike the Maximilians, those sunflowers have already been coming out. In fact the plant in the upper right had buds on it that were starting to open.
© 2026 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
