Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Figs Still Life

More Fig experimentation. As I was researching figs I found some interesting facts. The fruit of the fig is actually an intersting structure. Each fig is anctualy the result of a whole group of flowers (a botanical structure called an inflorescence). The fig inflorescence is a bit strange in the fact that all of the flowers point inward and you never see the flowers on the outside. This particular structure is called a syconium. Nature is very strange, interesting and beautiful!

Monday, December 5, 2011
Amaryllis Christmas Flower

Blooming amaryllis flower. This is the biggest Amaryllis I have ever seen. The bulb is amazing, and as the first bud started to work it's way out I could see there were going to be quite a few blossoms. I loved the curves of the blossoms as they opened, and my timing was perfect. A few minutes after this shot was taken the inflorescence was completely open and the five buds were all pointing in different directions.

Sunday, November 27, 2011
Hummingbird Sampling Nectar

Last weekend the Hummingbirds were very busy at the local nurseries. This girl (an Anna's Hummingbird) in particular was spending a lot of time at her favorite flowers. She was not particularly excited to have me there at first. But it was easy to see she really loved these flowers, some kind of South African Lily I believe. So all I had to do was get a step closer each time she came by, and she eventually was pretty comfortable with me.

Sunday, April 17, 2011
Agapanthus in the Morning Rain

Friends and family who live in a "less temperate" climate make fun of me when I mention the different seasons here, but I do love the change in our seasons. This is a fun early spring shot. The Agapanthus are just starting to bloom in our yard, and on this day an early morning rainstorm had just subsided to let the sunlight through. This combination of weather and sunlight can capture my attention for hours without even leaving my front yard. I actually had to tiptoe through the wet flowers to frame up the second blossom (or inflorescence), out of focus in the background.

Thursday, May 31, 2007
Glowing Kalanchoe Close-up

I have been having a lot of fun with my plants and cameras lately. This flower is less than a quarter of an inch across. When you see it normally as just one in a cluster of flowers (called an inflorescence) the colors look continuous. Fading from red to yellow. However, on closer inspection you can see the speckled nature of the color like the printed page in a magazine.

Sunday, May 13, 2007
Purple Geranium Flowers

This looks like a field of purple flowers. But they are actually all on the same plant. This is the top of a "Geranium maderense" it is a wild plant that has big leaves on long stems with a large spherical inflorescence of these beautiful purple flowers (as you can see at the right).

The plant is a biennial, the first year you only see the interesting leaves. The flowers (and resulting seeds) come the second year. After that the plant usually dies. Fortunately, it re-seeds easily and can even have pups come up from the roots.

Unfortunately this guy was not for sale, he was just the display plant. But I did bring home his little brother. :-D This, and a VERY cool Ginkgo bonsai tree are the reasons I waited to get yesterday's cactus at the succulent show!

Saturday, December 2, 2006
Miniature Boquet

It's really interesting what you find when you look close enough at something ordinary. Clover flowers that you can step on without a second thought take on an amazing beauty under the right light. This one almost looks like a bouquet of some exotic orchids. Coincidentally, what we would consider a "clover flower" is in fact a collection of small flowers. This type of structure is called an "inflorescence" in botanical terms and it is actually more common than you might realize. Once things drop below a certain size our eyes take them as one structure. But the camera helps reveal the truth.

Wednesday, April 5, 2006
The Agapanthus are Coming!

There are a lot of Agapanthus around our home and they are looking like they are about to burst! I took this one today on a walk with The Hound.

My botanist tells me that Agapanthus is derived from the Greek word "agapé" meaning love and "anthos" meaning flower.

And for those really interested in the botany, the group of flowers all radiating from the center with equal length "pedicles" (or individual flower stalks) is called an "umbel." An umbel is a kind of "inflorescence," which is a botanical term referring to a group or cluster of flowers and specifically the structure of that group. Ahhh the Internet, what can\'t it teach you?

Thursday, June 30, 2005
Backlit Agapanthus

Last week, when I was loading my Jeep for a show, I was fortunate enough to catch the sun at a great angle on our little front yard area. On a Saturday my Hound Dog and I would have still been quite unconscious at this time.

This is a variety of Lily native to South Africa. It grows like wild around here, and it's beautiful when they really get going.