by Sue Ann Kendall
I love it when I go for a walk and see things that you’d only see right where I am. This afternoon in Austin, where my housemate and I were enjoying some sun after all that rain over the weekend, I found these guys. Here’s an excerpt from a longer post on my personal blog. Let me know if I’ve mis-identified anything!
Today turned out to be beautiful. Anita and I enjoyed looking at some of the native plants and insects we pass by on our walks. Two were right outside our house, next to a steep rocky slope.
No matter how hard the landscapers try, they can’t get rid of all the beautiful plants that were here before the development was here. Case in point is the cedar sage you see here. Its native habitat is cedar brakes on caliche, where the ashe junipers are located. They like the rocky hillsides. Yep, that’s accurate! These beautiful flowers cover the rocks our house sits on, right under the native trees that got to stay when the neighborhood was built (now they qualify as “heritage” cedars, so allergic people can’t cut them down).
Nearby were these lovely little plants with tiny pink blossoms. There are many tiny plants with pink blossoms this time of year, but these looked different from all the others I’ve been finding. Sure enough, they are slender hedeoma (Hedeoma acinoides). There is not much about them in iNaturalist, but a quick check of their habitat shows it’s mainly the middle of Texas. It’s a local! Further checks on the Wildflower Center site found that their common name is slender false pennyroyal. I learned something new!
At the mailbox, my housemate, Anita, started jumping around, and I saw that there was a large winged insect flying and landing, which caused that reaction. I got everything nice and calm so I could photograph it.
It appears to be a crane fly, but I’m not sure which one it is. It could be Tipula tricolor or Tipula furca, juding by the wings. I assume someone on iNaturalist will set me straight. I thought it was nice of the crane fly to hold still so I could get such a good picture!
What have you been seeing? Care to share? I’d love to see more posts with your observations in them, to share with our fellow Master Naturalists
Nature Along the El Camino Real 