A Few Bright Blossoms and Brand New Leaves

Saturday, March 12, 2016

Even before the rain of this past week, the colors of early Spring were getting off to a good start:

Texas Redbud blossoms, Texas Baby Blue-eyes blossoms and the bright green, brand new leaves of a Box Elder are just a small sample of the colorful delight emerging this month. The rain over the past four days will certainly lead to a more colorful display of wildflowers throughout the natural areas in Bexar County in the coming weeks.

These photos were taken on a walk along the Mission San Juan, Mission Reach loop trail on Wednesday, March 2, 2016.

I probably should mention this loop trail is formed by a connector trail from the Yanaguana Nature Trail at Mission San Juan to a pedestrian bridge crossing the river to the main Mission Reach trail, then upstream to the Mission Road bridge and back to Mission San Juan.

Also, I added this note to the sidebar a couple weeks ago, but it is worth emphasizing here: to see the photos in each post in slideshow format, click on the first photo at the top of the post.

Land of the Spanish Dagger

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Medina River Natural Area, El Chaparral > Nogales >
Lower Rio Medina > El Camino Trails

Today's photos:

After a morning of leading a tour at the Medina River Natural Area, the best option for a walk today to take photos for a blog post was to go one more time around the trail loop in the early afternoon. This is just a small sample of what I encountered. Once again, I took so many photos, it will take a while to sort through all of them.

• The first photo is Spanish Dagger Yucca with a large stand of Prickly Pear cactus in the foreground and a Honey Mesquite tree immediately behind the yucca.
• The second and third photo are close ups of the Spanish Dagger Yucca flowers. The small green insect with the black spots just to the right of center is a Spotted Cucumber Beetle.
• The fourth photo is a close up of Texas Persimmon leaves. This particular tree has just set its new leaves and has done so earlier than most of the other persimmon trees in the area.
• The fifth, sixth and seventh photo are a Phaon Crescent butterfly getting a drink of water from between the rocks on the edge of the river. Phaon Crescents are very similar to Pearl Crescents except the Phaons have a yellow-orange stripe on the forewing.
• The eighth photo is a Texas Rose-bellied Lizard looking out over a low mound of soil. It wasn't much interested in posing for a photo. I was only able to take this one before it disappeared.
• The ninth photo is a Purple Leatherflower, also known as purple clematis, that hasn't quite fully opened yet.
• The tenth photo is a close up of Box Elder seeds still on the tree from the Fall. Anyone who knows much about tree seeds will immediately recognize that the box elder is in the maple family.