The Creek Journal: 07/01/2012

Walk by Sight

A dull photo of a dull subject (except, of course,
for the showy bush of lantana to the left).

But an apparently dull subject can be transformed into a beautiful and fascinating object of study or pleasure. This is done, of course, by seeing. It's all about sight. For those who walk by faith and not by sight, I pity the unnecessary displeasure this world must bring to them. Below is a series of quick images taken within the confines of the photograph above. They aren't amazing photographs, but every image is a testament to the amazing world of sight we had best not disparage before we are blinded forever. Within a few minutes, we were able to pick out a gorgeous collection of flowers from an otherwise mundane piece of summer scenery.

Texas lantana (Lantana horrida) Wild petunia (Ruellia nudiflora)

Texas bindweed (Convolvulus equitans)

such an uneventful looking Compositae flower
we will not even give its name

Hairy tubetongue (Siphonoglossa pilosella)

Silver-leaf nightshade
(Solanum elaeagnifolium)

Coreopsis

Pigeon berry (Rivina humilis) Prairie verbena (Verbena bipinnatifida)

Palafoxia (Palafoxia callosa)

Indian blanket (Gaillardia pulchella)

White prickly poppy (Argemone albiflora)

See the inconspicuous crab spider on the right prickly poppy flower? Here it is now below again. It is so desperately trying to be inconspicuous and a nothing that it has conveniently lost its front right crab-like claw.

an assumed Leguminosae of some kind

Lindheimer's Senna (Cassia Lindheimeri)

The image to the left is another great example of the sort of drab ugliness we confess to love so much. Here the mullein (Verbascum thapsus) has grown tall and tired this late in the season, but like an old and ugly man, it cannot help but bloom alone and unrecognized.

And to the right, the dimmunitive Texas frog fruit (Phyla incisa) blossoms have attracted scores of moths and butterflies this time of year.

Below is an inconspicuous bit of useless flower.
Not a lot of attention. Not a lot of show. Just taking up space among the stones. And one of the white flowers enlarged to the right.

White heliotrope (Heliotropium tenellum)

Wild Poinsettia

(Euphorbia cyathophora)

We doubt that anybody will soon be singing the praises of these two humble flowers. A casual hike through these hills might involve stepping on them, but probably not a convincing stop long enough to take them fully into view. And when tourists and natives drive our local highways now, these are the flowers referred to in the statement "all the bluebonnets are gone and there are no flowers out now."

what?

Scarlet spiderling (Boerhaavia coccinea)

Everything said above applies to these two unnecessary flowers as well. And to illustrate the point even more, observe the dull unnecessariness of the larger plant below from which the piece of dullness above right was taken.

Seriously. Does it really get more uninteresting than Boerhaavia coccinea?

OK. This blog needs some help for just a moment. . . .

Much better. No boring Boerhaavia coccinea putting us to us to sleep here.

For our mystery fish who now have proven themselves quite fertile parents, see a short video clip of their nervous attempts to guard a shifting brown cloud of several thousand eighth-inch long young ones.

Or click on this image for a second video:

One Texas Parks and Wildlife Department source to whom I emailed photos of our fish says he thinks these are Rio Grande Cichlids. This or that site may provide support for his claim.

http://nas.er.usgs.gov/

queries/factsheet.aspx?
SpeciesID=443

http://www.bio.txstate.edu/~

tbonner/txfishes/cichlasoma%
20cyanoguttatum.htm

Lights

Upside-down reflections in the Pool.

Stand on your head at six-thirty in the late afternoon, and this is how colored lights appear.

Walk around behind your monitor, look down on the screen, and see the "real" thing.

Panicum virgatum

Just love grasses.

Huge bunches of switchgrass form dense stands along the creek's banks this year. In the late afternoon and backlit with a summer sun, the long blades glow like a symbol of life.

Switchgrass, one of our native species of the tallgrass prairies, is sometimes also called tall panic grass, Wobsqua grass, blackbent, tall prairiegrass, wild redtop, or thatchgrass.

The name "panic grass" comes from the Middle English "panik," which is ultimately from the Latin "panicum," or "panis," meaning bread. "Panicum" also can refer to panicle, the botanical term referring to a many-branching inflorescence (the flower-bearing stalks of a plant) or the compound raceme (the elongated cluster of flowers along a common stem) we see among grasses. And the association with bread comes from all the bread-grains (such as millet) within the genus Panicum. Some 450 species form this genus. Millet (Panicum miliaceum) is one of the oldest of the cultivated grains, found to have been grown even in Neolithic times.

(See the photo of kleingrass for another member of this genus.)
Below is a stolen picture of the root system of a bunch of switchgrass. For a plant that can grow six or eight feet tall, these are some impressive roots. Doubtful that our switchgrass produces roots at such depth (but maybe) here among such a wealth of stone.