Saturday color

I have a list of the titles of every post, in an attempt not to have duplicates, and double-checked this one before continuing. Not only have I not done ‘Saturday color’ before, the only time I’ve done Saturday in a title has been ‘Saturday night black & white,’ only a few months ago. Go figure.

Anyway, quick photos without much exposition, from an outing today. I have less than 90 minutes left to post this before it’s not Saturday, so wish me luck.

closeup of purpletop vervain Verbena bonariensis
You’d think just posting some photos wouldn’t be much of a challenge, but I’m providing the species names too, which requires looking them up. This was almost the easiest, since I’ve posted it before, though that doesn’t mean I remember the name or how to find the post quickly. It’s a purpletop vervain (Verbena bonariensis,) going in close with very short depth, so I chose one particular blossom to focus upon, never realizing that it still had dew on it from the morning.

small red morning glory  Convolvulaceae with unidentified purple flower in background
This is a small red morning glory – that’s not a description, but the actual name – a member of the Convolvulaceae family which is as specific as it gets, apparently. Plus some unidentified purple flower in the background. Only about 15-20mm across, much smaller than the common morning glory bloom sizes.

likely gentian sage Salvia patens with unidentified sweat bees
There are a significant number of salvia (or sage) varieties, but I’m guessing this one is a gentian sage (Salvia patens.) I’m not even going to try to identify the tiny sweat bees checking it out, since they measured all of 5mm at the most. That’s not being sizest – some of my best friends are 5mm. It’s just that I don’t have enough identifying features to make the effort. Plus it’s still Saturday…

fireweed Chamerion angustifolium closeup
One thing about flowers is, they usually have a variety of ‘common’ names, and this one in particular goes by fireweed, narrow-leaf fireweed, willow herb, rosebay willow herb, and blooming sally – but all are Chamerion angustifolium. Again, in close for detail of dew and unopened buds, though the petals and the buds themselves were 20-25mm, so the open blossom was fairly big.

And finally,

firewheel Gaillardia pulchella direct portrait
This is perhaps the most geometrically perfect blossom that I’ve ever photographed, so of course I had to do the direct perspective. It’s a firewheel, or Indian blanket, or Indian blanketflower, or perhaps even Native-American woven-covering herbaceous genitalia (probably not, but Gaillardia pulchella is likely anyway.) As I type this, it seems I’ve also featured these before, though I don’t remember it, but the tag appeared in the list as I started to type it. Ah, yes, earlier this year too. But not as Euclidean as this one.

There’s going to be another color post coming soon, from the same outing too, but this time it’ll be arthropods. Alert your friends, call in the dog, whatever it takes.

And so you know, it’s 11:35 PM as I hit ‘Publish’…