I'd been noticing a few lingering basket-flowers (Plectocephalus americanus) in the little meadow at the Floral Park Dr. entrance to Great Hills Park, so on July 13th I stopped there to take some pictures. It was good timing because within days the city mowed that area. Unlike what happens many times, at least most of the wildflowers there had gone to seed, so the mowing did minimal damage. The bud shown here, however, wouldn't have had time to become a flower head like the one it had nestled against, much less develop seeds.
On the other side of Floral Park Dr. the city mows only a narrower strip. The picture below, taken on that other side, shows a wasp that was probably either Polistes carolina or Polistes rubiginosus on a Clematis drummondii flower. As I recall, the spot was a little beyond the zone that gets mowed, so those flowers would have had a chance to produce seeds. In fact when I took a glance at that area a few days ago, I saw plenty of Clematis drummondii vines doing their thing.
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"There is a great difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation."
That sentence from John Stuart Mill's 1859 essay "On Liberty" is at least as pertinent today, when activists try to cancel (and too often succeed in canceling) people with whom they disagree. Unfortunately this has become the most censorious period I've experienced as an American.
© 2023 Steven Schwartzman
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