Rattlesnake Weed

When we talk about beautiful flowers we can only express what appears so from our own limited perspective. Our eyes can see things that are only so small. We often describe those things that are small for our eyes as "diminutive". A relative term certainly. But by being so a thing falls out of those lists of objects, and here we are talking about flowers, that may or may not be beautiful but we just can't see them well enough to know.  "Its flowers are diminutive."  End of discussion. There is a plant that I have seen thousands of times as I walk the pinyon-juniper woodlands around here. I've stepped over it. I've no doubt stepped on it as well.  It grows along roadsides and in other disturbed areas throughout the woodlands and grasslands.  If you choose to one day look it up just for the heck of it you find that it is in the spurge family with the common name of rattlesnake weed.  When I first saw this name I assumed this low flat-growing plant had that name because it was close to the ground just like a rattlesnake.

The fact is though that the plant received its name because of the belief that it could be used to cure snake bite.  From what I understand the plant if ingested as a tea or just eaten acts as an emetic. This reaction was felt to have a curative benefit to the snakebite victim. I guess absent of any local emergency room with anti-venom this was at least doing something for the poor bitten person back in the old days.

Well here is a the normal view of rattlesnake weed taken as it appears to the unaided eye as you stroll through the countryside:

If those are flowers down there the certainly are diminutive.










Perhaps if we were to bend over a little to improve our view:

Well I guess they are flowers.   Still pretty small but not too noticeable.  However, if we get out our hand lense and really zoom in :

Perspective is everything. Diminutive, showy, beautiful, non-descript. How can you describe them? How should you describe them?  How do you see them?  The Grand Canyon is not far from here.  Are these flowers that should grace the Grand Canyon?  They do. How do they compare?  How do we see the small and the grand?  Should our response to this tiny blossom  be any less than the grandest canyon?  It is.  But maybe if we think on it. Ponder the reality of it. Maybe we'll see the universe in the flower as well.