Wind-Flower

Wind-Flower – Anemone heterophylla – I found this wonderful wildflower at a roadside picnic area near Canyon Lake, Texas.  I made a rookie mistake in that I didn’t get good images of the entire plant.  Therefore, several days later while trying to identify the flower I was pretty well stuck as I could not find anything that looked like it in any of my wildflower field guides, two of which are specific to Texas.  I went back to the rest area only to find that the flowers were gone.  They had been moved along with several others that I still needed to identify.  Fortunately for me, a trip to Barnes and Noble solved my problem.  I found “Wildflowers of the Texas Hill Country” by Marshall Enquist.  The photographs in this book are so much better than any of the other Texas books I have used.  I was quickly able to find this flower and upon further examination of my images, I was able to verify that the leaf shape was the same between Marshall’s images and mine.  I also learned that the blooming period for these flowers is among the shortest and earliest of the Hill Country wildflowers.  So, it was no great surprise that they had been mowed down.