This only begins to show how many bugs (using the term loosely, but including actual bugs) inhabit one cactus flower. I don't know if anyone's done a study on the ecology of cactus flowers, but it's a definite project possibility.
Matelia reticulata, or the reticulated milkvine, also known as the pearl milkvine, has flowers that look like jewelry--including when it climbs over something, as here. I first saw it down near New Braunfels--the silvery-shiny center dot (the "pearl") glinted out of a tangle of leaves growing over another bush.	Here's a closeup of one of the flowers. You can probably guess that it's in the milkweed family. On our place, the flowers look more "gold-tinged" than on the plant I photographed all those years ago...and the reticulations are finer, too. They grow in relatively dry places (here, it's up near Fox Pavilion, sprawling over the dead sumac branches.
Also up near Fox Pavilion, a dragonfly landed briefly on a cedar twig and gave me exactly one shot. I needed more. I'm not sure what this is...in some ways it looks like a female variegated meadowhawk, but I'm going to have to ask for help.	Last week while shredding with the big tractor, I saw a male Common Whitetail, Libellula lydia, the first one I'd seen on our place (they may be common, but not here--at least not that I've noticed.) Saturday, walking along the creek with camera in hand, I came upon a female, who posed prettily for me.
Prairie larkspur is a pale shadow of garden larkspurs, but it has a delicacy they lack, pale shades of dawn and dusk...and it grows without assistance in dry, gravelly soils along the creekbank before the trees begin.	Near the south end of the woods, we have a seasonal "swamp"--it's an overflow channel in flash floods, but when the creek is flowing strongly, water also seeps through underground and emerges to flow slowly and quietly along to the south fenceline. On a low hump between two of the braided channels, we planted a bald cypress this year. It really liked the rain.
This little rams-horn snail had been waiting a long time...but here it is, under water in the "swamp", working away on a decaying stalk of giant ragweed.
To make the swamp feel even more tropical, this stunning pipevine swallowtail, Battus philenor fluttered in and out of shafts of sunlight near the little bald cypress, flashing its brilliant iridescent blue hindwing. The forewing has a deep violet-indigo color that really doesn't show (just looks flat black) in pictures. Underneath, it shows off big orange, and smaller yellow and blue spots on black.

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