Detail from the Gateway Arch

The Gateway Arch is clad in stainless steel. The corners of this 630 foot structure meets the ground at exact angles.

St. Louis Gateway Arch

The St. Louis Gateway Arch was completed in 1965 and is the tallest man-made monument in the United States at 630 feet. It is so large, it is hard to get a perspective of its size until you see it from a distance and even then it is hard to relate what you are seeing to its surroundings.

Downtown St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri is the gateway to the West. In the center of this photo of the downtown area is the Old Courthouse where the Dred Scott case was tried in 1847.

Iron in a Sand Bar

Historically, people have been so impressed the amount of iron available in a sad bar, that they have struck a claim and tried to mine the iron. My most popular use for the black sand is to pull it out of the sand with a magnet and watch the design made by the magnetic force.

In a Tight Place

There seems to be no limit to the places that cactus can grow. I find them on cliffs and half-way covered in water. This long spined specimen looks comfortable in its surroundings.

Among the Thorns

Sometimes I plan to get pictures of animals including insects and sometimes they show up uninvited. I can't remember if I saw this fly in the photo be for I took it or not. If I did, I did a good  job of getting a difficult shot on focus.

Layers upon Layers upon Layers

The dry explanations for these layers of sand and rock lack the color and form of the reality. These are symphonies in stone.

Red and White

Depending on your point of view, this could be white and red also. The colors are vivid and the sky is so blue it hurts your eyes to look at it. This is Southern Utah so I am walking there for a while and will get back to Arizona after a while.

A Study in Contrasts

The layers of sandstone and clay on the Colorado Plateau provide an unending variety of colors and shapes. You could literally stand in one place and take pictures all day long and get a different picture every time.

Really small flowers

Some of the flowers are so small, they can hardly be seen. These are in clusters on a stem so they are more prominent, but the tiny flowers are barely visible. I would love to have someone who knew all the flowers walk around with me to point them out. For this reason, we have gone to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum for bird walks, tree walks and lizard walks.

Seed Pods of Fall

I haven't been able to identify these seed pods or the tree. I have a long list of what they are not. But what they are seems to elude me. Maybe, someone out there can help?

Painted Lady Butterfly

This is the Painted Lady Butterfly or Vanessa cardui. It is a very common but strikingly beautiful butterfly. I was surprised to see this one in Missouri since I had just seen one in Arizona. There are some variations in the patterning of the wings between individual butterflies.

Common Buckeye Butterfly

The Common Buckeye Butterfly or Junonia coenia, is found throughout the Mid-west. Its coloration and the design of its wings are anything but common. I took this photo in the Clarence Cannon National Wildlife Refuge, just north of St. Louis.

Looking Up

You get a different perspective of trees when you look straight up. In fact, looking up gives you a different perspective on life in general. I suppose I should look up more often and maybe I wouldn't spend so much time typing away on the computer.

Fall Flowers

The flowers were still blooming and the bees working away at gathering pollen just a few days before snow and ice were predicted. I have a hard time reconciling with cold weather. I never seem to take enough coats or whatever to the cold country when it is still over 90 degrees in the desert.

A Fall Carpet

I guess I am attracted to carpets of fallen leaves because they are so rare in the desert. In Mesa, the trees lose their leaves in stages, with some only turning yellow and falling off just as the new leaves appear in January and February. Unless it is unusually cold, very few of the trees have colored leaves. I liked this walk in a deciduous forest. 

Woolly Bear

This is the Woolly Bear or the caterpillar form of the Isabella Tiger Moth, Pyrrharctia isabella. This little insect overwinters in this form and survives when it is literally frozen solid. It survives being frozen by producing acryoprotectant in its tissues. In the spring it thaws out and emerges to pupate. Once it emerges from its pupa as a moth it has only days to find a mate. See Wikipedia: Pyrrharctia isabella.

A Quiet Pond

I don't usually associate this kind of wide open view with the eastern part of the United States. This is the Clarence Cannon National Wildlife Refuge, right along the banks of the Mississippi River in Pike County, Missouri. It was a cool and windy day, too warm for a coat but too cool for comfort. It was early Fall and the grass had turned yellow and the leaves on the trees were turning but had not dropped.

Dark Bark

This beautiful old tree had the darkest shade of brown bark I have seen. It was almost black. I love the patterns in the bark and the subtle shades of color.

Mississippi Levy

I don't think this is what I had in mind when I heard about levies on the banks of the Mississippi River. I had more in mind huge piles of dirt or cement barricades. The River is just beyond the trees and the levy curves away to the right. From the looks of the surrounding land, it doesn't appear that this levy makes much of a difference in floods.

Hollow Tree

Hollow trees are fascinating in their form and structure. In this case, the tree is very much alive and is recovering from a burn scar. You can tell by looking at the edge of the hollow. The rounded edge of the living wood, shows that the tree will sometime cover up this cavity completely, leaving a hollow core.

Snake in the Aloe

This is another Western Diamondback Rattlesnake or Crotalus atrox. This was a pretty good-sized snake that kept gliding off into the brush and under cactus. It did not want to stop and have its photo taken, so I got it on the run, so to speak.

Monarch

One of the most colorful butterflies in Arizona is the Monarch or Danaus p. plexippus. They migrate in large numbers and there is supposed to be one of the areas where they congregate in the West Salt River Valley. This is a particularly nice picture of one.

Aloe

We have benefited from the medicinal qualities of the common Aloe vera, but this is one of the over 500 species of Aloes that grow around the world.

White Tips

One of the challenges of taking photos of plants and animals is identifying them. Unfortunately not everything in nature comes with a label. These small cactus are so similar to others that appear the same, positive identification is difficult, especially from a photo.

Riparian Habitat

The Arizona-Sonora Desert is a land of contrasts. There is no greater contrast than between the riparian zones along the streams and rivers and the very quick transition to the desert. Here that transition is dramatically illustrated along the Queen Creek south of Superior, Arizona.

Pipevine Swallowtail

This is a pipevine swallowtail or Battus philenor. It usually appears all dark blue, but the light here made it look brown to black with the blue only showing in the tail area. Until I started taking photos of the butterflies, I really didn't realize how many different species there were here in Arizona. 

Barbed Wire

When I was young, we called this "Bobbed Wire." I didn't learn that it was barbed wire until many years later. Where I spent a lot of time while growing up, even though it was in Arizona, had a strong Southern United States influence. It was only recently that I learned that the name "Bobbed Wire" came from the South, evidently from the early pioneers who came from Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas.

Details

If you look closely at this photo, you will see a world of detail. Look for the tiny bug on the leaf and other interesting things. The shredding bark on this Eucalyptus tree also gives detail to the photo.

The Weathered Roof

In many parts of the world, wood rots before it gets this weathered. In the desert, it will take years and years to disintegrate unless it is subjected to water periodically and not allowed to dry. I love the texture and color of the old wood.

Honey Box

In keeping with plant names that have no discernible meaning, this is one of those. There has to be some reason that this tree is called a honey box or Eucalyptus melliodora. I liked the pattern of the knobs and bark. There are several faces in the bark and knobs. See if you can figure out where they are.

Backlit Arrangement

Sometimes the rays of the sun are almost palpable. These saguaros, ocotillos and a couple of small barrel cactus look as though they were purposefully planted to create an effect. Maybe they were and I just didn't know it.

Grass Tree

I don't know which is more unusual; the plant or the name. I cannot imagine how this grassy plant got to be called a grass tree or Xanthorrhoea quadrangulata. It looks sort-of similar to a yucca but comes from Australia and so it is not a yucca. It is not a great photo, but the subject is really strange.

A Rocky Desert Outcrop

These rocks are formed of welded tuff, that is volcanic ash cemented together under tremendous heat and pressure. It erodes due to weaknesses in the rock that do not follow any particular pattern. On the side of the ridge, you can see ocotillo, saguaro and prickly pear cactus. This outcrop is located inside the Boyce Thompson Arboretum, just south of Superior, Arizona.

Ferocactus robustus

This cactus, the Ferocactus robustus can form clumps of plants up to 4 feet high and 16 feet in diameter. They are found in the Mexican States of Puebla and Veracruz. N. L. Britton, J. N. Rose (1922) (in German), The Cactaceae. Descriptions and Illustrations of Plants of the Cactus Family, Band III, Washington: The Carnegie Institution of Washington, pp. 133. It is a red alert threatened species.

Paper Wasp

This is the paper wasp Polistes flavus. This large yellow wasp frequents the same part of Arizona as the Saguaro Cactus. They are usually found around water because they need water to manufacture their saliva to mix with chewed wood to create the paper of their nests. They are not aggressive and if you leave them alone, they will leave you alone.

The eye of the pond.

This is another photo from my surrealistic stage of development. It is very hard to keep this image looking real. I can assure you it was and is real.

Pond Water

You can just see the small fish swimming in this almost green pond water. The reflections are clouds of algae spreading across the surface. It is a rich habitat for fish, birds, turtles and lots of insects. The water is not very inviting for a swim, however.

Sunning

This is probably a Pond Slider or Trachemys scripta. It is one of the most common turtles in the world due to its popularity in the pet trade. It is a non-native species. The younger turtles are yellow with a prominent red spot. As they grow older they become a drab grey black.

Fruit and Flowers

Usually, most of the plants I am acquainted with have flowers and then produce fruit from the flower. But barrel cactus are the exception. They have fruit and keep producing flowers at the same time.

Euphorbia aeruginosa

This is Euphorbia aeruginosa and it doesn't seem to have a common name at all. In fact, it has one of the shortest Wikipedia articles I have seen lately. This is the type of photo that is better if seen in a larger size. You can click on the photo to enlarge it in most browsers. Just a reminder, euphorbia are not cacti.

Curve-billed Thrasher

This is the Curved-billed Thrasher or Toxostoma curvirostre. It is a relatively common bird in South-central Arizona and its range extends deep into Mexico. I am finding taking pictures of birds to be an interesting challenge. You have to be able to see them before you can take a picture of them. I have gone to setting my camera at 2000th of a second and trying to get the bird in focus before snapping the shutter. I get about one of five successful photos.

Stars in the world of plants

This is the Euphorbia echinus from Africa. Even though it looks a lot like a cactus it is not. Cactus are indigenous to the Americas. Most of the similar looking plants from Africa are euphorbias. There are some similarities but the the main differences are in the structure of the spines. If you look closely at the base of the spines, you will see that euphorbia do not have areoles or the raised spots with glochids or tiny spines.

Monarch Butterfly

This is a Monarch butterfly or Danaus plexippus. It is well known for its beautiful color and is famous for its southward late summer/autumn migration from the United States and southern Canada to Mexico and coastal California, and northward return in spring, which occurs over the lifespans of three to four generations of the butterfly.

Carrion Plant or Toad Plant

This is commonly known as a carrion flower or Stapelia gigantea. You can see that this flower attracts flies because of its horrible smell like rotten meat. When the flower first opens, it is yellow but over time, it turns bright red. You can judge the size of the flower by the size of the flies it attracts.

Ready to eat lunch

This Desert Tortoise or Gopherus agassizii and Gopherus morafkai is just about ready to eat a luscious prickly pear fruit spines and all. This particular tortoise lives in the lap of luxury in the Desert Botanical Garden of Phoenix, Arizona. I'm sure that living out in the wilds of the Arizona Sonora Desert would be a lot more difficult.

Powis Castle Wormwood

This sagebrush type plant has the very unusual name of Powis Castle Wormwood or Artemesia x'Powis Castle.' Sometimes you can only speculate how these plants got their names. Powis Castle (Welsh: Castell Powis) is a medieval castle, fortress and grand country mansion located near the town of Welshpool, in Powys, Mid Wales. I suppose the plant became associated with the place.

Mexican Bush Sage

This striking flower is Mexican bush sage or Salvia leucantha. I don't think we normally associate spectacular flowers with sage, but they seem to have some notable exceptions to the rule. This is not the sage as in sagebrush, but the sage as in the kind you might eat. As you walk around and look at plants, your world will expand and you will notice even more remarkable things.

A Water Colored Still Life

When my life is over and all is said and done, it will be the beautiful things of the earth I will remember the best. Some times the beauty is crowded out with the day to day concerns of a long and adventurous life, but then, in quiet moments, I can return to my memories and wash away the noise and commotion of the world. I can then reflect on the reality of eternity and hope and faith in the future.

Looking Down to Look Up

Reflections are a window into another, more peaceful world than the one we live in. But in this case the world I was in was just a peaceful as the one in the reflection. But our peace didn't last long enough.