Eryngium leavenworthii – Eryngo
This is one time of the year that you might find the skeletons of the annual herbaceous plant Leavenworth’s Eryngo with their unique pineapple-shaped flowerheads. With their spiked leaves and bristly appearance, you might think them to be among the thistles, but actually they are related to carrots. Although lacking in the rich purple hues of its growing season, the bare remains have their own sort of beauty.
Krameria lanceolata – rattany
Krameria is a low lying plant with fairly small but striking flowers, as can be seen here, with a little bit of the foliage in evidence behind it. The leaves are thin and almost spike-like, hence the lanceolata portion of its name and both the stem and the leaves are a bit hirsute including the seed, seen in the lower left of this photo. The bright reddish things that bring it to your attention are actually sepals, while the actual petals are the small things in the center with the green and red mixed coloration.
Cicada shell
Here’s an empty cicada shell still hanging on an Ashe Juniper Juniperus ashei, or Cedar, as it is known commonly in these parts. It is perhaps symbolic of the first blog post of the new year that it features an artifiact of a fauna that has shed its old skin to emerge with a fresh new exoskeleton. Perhaps. Or it could be that I simply meant to choose a different picture and accidentally ( or subconsciously) chose this one instead. Could be.
One could try to figure out what it all means, or one could simply take a deep breah, and, in the words of Paul McCartney, let it be…
bob's brain: living well with a movement disorder and other comorbidities 