Blowin in the wind

You know those cottony looking balls on dandelions and other plants -- I think they call them clocks -- I got a view at a bunch of them growing on the side of Hwy 105 out by Sour Lake a few weeks back. Wikipedia says the clocks have many single-seeded furites called achenes, each attached to a pappus of fine hairsto enable wind-aided dispersal over long distances.

All that is the kind of scientific stuff. What got me thinking was that, with the change from summer to fall, these pappus were finished with the mother plant and ready to embark on their own adventure in life.

Their early life as a flower and their dance with bees was surely no longer in their memory. Now, they didn't know where they were going, and for sure they didn't know what they were going to do when they got there. They were just letting their nature lead them as they grabbed ahold of the wind.

--steve buser

wind, flower, clock, dandelion, pappus, nature, weather, wind, summer, fall, Sour Lake, Texas