This was the most remote night of camping in my life
Two of the photos that I took this month were from a trip to Big Bend National Park that I took with Matt, Nick, and a good friend Kenny in the fall of 2021. On our second full day in the park, we decided to take it easy since we had climbed up Emory Peak—the tallest mountain in the Chisos Mountain Range—the day before. We hiked around our roadside backcountry campground. The night before, the nearest people camping to us were more than 3 miles away. It was one of the most remote nights of my life.
At the west end of our campsite was a trail that meandered into the Chihuahuan desert down to Croton Springs. “Springs” was a generous term for what we found. There was a creek bed that cut its way through the desert, but it looked as if there hadn’t been water in there for a long time. Flash flooding can occur in a desert creek like this, and it’s important to check what the weather is within your vicinity. It was hiking along this creek bed that I encountered this wild, flowing flower called a Texas virgin’s bower.
The sun was piercing through the petals, and I thought it would be a great opportunity for a more artistic macro photo. I had rented a 100mm lens for the weekend with a very narrow f-stop of 2.8. Using a low f-stop, or aperture focus, allows you to have a very small portion of your subject in focus and to create a blurred background, which is also known as bokeh.
The Texas virgin’s bower goes by a few names: old man’s beard, barba de chivato, and its scientific name, Clematis drummondii. Although I found it in the Chihuahuan desert, it can also be found in the Sonoran desert. It is also found in some prairies and grasslands throughout Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and northern Mexico. Fun fact, the sap of this plant is caustic!
This climbing, vining flower is a member of the buttercup family, Ranunculaceae. That means that the Texas virgin’s bower is one of the 2,000 known species and 43 genera of the buttercup family. The Clematis genera that it belongs to has over 325 species. This plant is unlike most members of the Ranunculaceae family which have bisexual flowers. The Texas virgin’s bower is dioecious, meaning that it has male and female flowers that grow on separate vines. The male flowers have a mushroom cap shape. The female flowers have a central column of vertical stigma with horizontally spread stamens. What you see in this photo is the achenes that form after pollination.
The sap of this plant is caustic!
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