So now you’ve seen pictures from Monahans Sandhills State Park and Caprock Canyons State Park. When we left Lubbock on April 17th to head back to Austin, we soon came to the town of Post, which has a fascinating history as the creation of cereal magnate C.W. Post (of Post Toasties, Postum, and Grape-Nuts fame). We spent a little time at the OS Museum, where we got directions to the town’s history museum. Somehow I missed it, but that proved to be good luck because several blocks after the missed turn we came to a “vacant” lot that had various native plants on it.

One of my finds there was the small and close-to-the-ground plant you see here. I had no idea what it was, but eventually I found it in a wildflower book. It’s Senna pumilio, known as dwarf senna for its small size (Latin pumilus means ‘diminutive, dwarf’). If you look back at the most common senna in Austin, you’ll see why I failed to make a connection to the little plant in Post.

I rarely aim straight down when I photograph a plant because that usually produces the least picturesque and most cluttered view of the subject, but this plant was so low that I didn’t have a lot of choice.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman