Posts in Category: wildflower
Wood Lily!
I rode my ebike out to the Kennebunk Plains yesterday looking for dragonflies, and was surprised to find the the Wood Lilies in full bloom. This feels early for Wood Lily. I think of them in full bloom in mid to late July…but there they were. Much of the area where they grow was included in the prescribed burn of last September, and it looks like we will not have lilies this year in those areas, but along the edge in the deeper brush that did not burn, they are tall already. The light was lovely yesterday afternoon and showed the lilies to best advantage. Sony Rx10iv at 480mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Wild Rose with Snout Beatles
The wild roses are in bloom at Laudholm Farms (Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve) just down the road from us…well, actually, they are in bloom all though southern Maine right now…but I photographed this one at Laudholm Farms. It has some pesky visitors, known to gardeners (and everyone else) as the Red-snout Beatles. They are not welcome in most people’s gardens, as they damage the plants, but I guess, out here in nature, they are to be expected where the flowers are in bloom. Sony Rx10iv at 512mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Little Green Metallic Bee on Owl Clover
The Green Metallic Bee clan is among my favorite set of insects. They are mostly tiny. If you know Owl Clover you know that the blossoms are themselves quite small, so you can get a sense of just how small the bee is. I am always delighted to find one. I only found my first one a few years ago, quite by chance, right in our front yard working the flowers. I never “expect” to see them, and certainly did not expect one when I bent down to photograph the Owl Clover. I did a brief search, by the way, on why Owl Clover is called Owl Clover. The consensus seems to be that no one knows. ? Some say the flower heads might look like little owls with the individual blossoms making “owl ears”…but no one seems to be particularly convinced by that solution…and I certainly am not. It shall remain a mystery. Of course there is no doubt about why the Green Metallic Bee is called the Green Metallic Bee. 🙂 Like the Owl Clover, there are many species of Green Metallic Bee…not all of them tiny. I won’t even attempt to hazard a guess as to which one this is, though I am pretty sure it is the only species I have ever seen here in Southern Maine. Sony Rx10iv at about 90mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Grass Pink Orchids
Grass Pink Orchids come in many different shades and there is even a rare White Grass Pink Orchid, which is its own species. The last flower in this series might be one…but it could be just a unusually pale Grass Pink. It certainly stood out among all the pinker Grass Pinks in the tiny remnant bog at Laudholm Farms (Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve), in Wells, Maine. The boardwalk through the bog is my go-to place for at least two bog orchids…the Grass Pink and the Rose Pogonia …though it was apparently too dry this spring for the Pagonias. Sony Rx10iv at various focal lengths from 600mm to about 80mm using Sony’s full time macro. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications (which I also use for macro). Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Jack-in-the-pulpit
The parking lot and trail at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge here in Southern Maine has been closed until just this past weekend, so I have not been able to check on this year’s crop of Jack-in-the-pulpits near the bike rack were they have been growing for several years. Now that the parking lot is open, I stopped by on my eBike to see what was up. I suspect the first plants were transplanted as part of a “wild garden” concept, which has since gone completely wild. The Jacks that grow there are the largest I have ever seen…way larger than I could have ever imagined Jack-in-the-pulpits could get. The oldest plants are over 3 feet tall with many pulpits…and some of the pulpits themselves are 6 inches in length. The leaves can be a foot long. These are really big plants. And they are spreading. There are now two smaller plants along side the bike rack that were definitely not there last year. 🙂 Sony Rx10iv at various focal lengths (the Sony has full time macro focus). Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Beach Rose Pond
This little pond is right on Route 9 between Brown Street and the Kennebunk/Wells town line. The beauty of this view stopped me on my eBike as I rode by yesterday. Sony Rx10iv at 24mm equivalent. HDR mode. I used Program Shift to select a small aperture for increased depth of field and selective focus on the roses. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Wild Iris
The Wild Iris, also called the Blue Flag Iris, is one of the most beautiful and widespread wildflowers of late spring / early summer in North America. I wait patiently for this reliable clump, a the edge of a pond along one of our local roads, to bloom each year. Generally I can catch them on at least one sunny day, but this year they were in full bloom on the first of day of several days of overcast and rain. Still beautiful. I used Program Shift to select f16 for this shot…to increase depth of field, and selectively focused on the closest Iris. Though I say that, I was also using HDR mode to help keep detail in the cloudy sky…so, while the recorded aperture is indeed f16, at a shutter speed of 1/20th of a second (ISO 100 and an exposure bias of -1 (again for detail in the clouds)…some of the individual exposures for the HDR will have varied one or more of those settings. At any rate, I was pleased with the results. I try to avoid anything under f5.6 in general shooting, as the Sony lens is sharpest near wide open, but this, I think, worked. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Lupines for Sunday
On Friday afternoon I rode my eBike out to Emmon’s Preserve to check for early dragonflies in the meadows, but mainly to check on the Lupine bloom in a field out that way. In the week between visits we have had some nice early summer weather, and indeed, the Lupines have responded. I took my landscape camera with me…the Sony a6500 with the 16mm lens (24mm equivalent) and the Ultrawide converter, which results in an 18mm equivalent view. I invested in this combination because I always enjoy the perspective of the ultrawide lens. I don’t carry it enough on my photoprowls around home. The sun was behind the clouds, where it had been all morning, when I got to the Lupine field, but I waited it out, and got a few shots at the end of the visit with the sun on the flowers. I offer this shot as celebration of Sunday! Sony a6500 as above with 18mm equivalent. HDR mode. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
An abundance of Lady Slippers
You will want to view this as large as your device allows. 🙂 There is a poem:
6/5
I met a man out on one of my rambles
today who told me that if I just went
on out past the pond (where I seldom
go), and looked along on the left there,
down into the woods, I would find a
big patch of Lady Slipper Orchids.
“Has to be a hundred of them,” he said.
I took it as your typical Maine exaggeration,
but as I had nothing more pressing to
accomplish than checking on the
progress of early dragon and damselflies
around the pond, I thought, “why not”
and headed out there. It was further out
than I thought, but when I found the place
it was unmistakable. Not a hundred…
more like five hundred, Lady Slippers,
maybe even a thousand (and that is no
Maine exaggeration), though they were hard
to count among the trees and scattered
over a long thin rectangle of open woods,
maybe three hundred by a hundred feet,
as the slope slopes off down to the
brook among the big trees. I have never
seen anything to match it, Lady Slipper
wise. Some of the clumps were a dozen
blossoms or more, and some of the plants
were eighteen inches tall…big healthy
looking flowers, rich rose pink, delicately
veined, even in the half light of a cloudy
day under the canopy of tall maples, pines
and oaks. I took a lot of photos, of clumps
and individual blossoms, and of patches
were I could find a line of sight, but it was
impossible to capture even a little bit
of the impression of so may Lady Slippers,
so tall, so pink, all in such a small piece
of woods. Only on the way back did I
think of video. I could have maybe caught
it better with some pans and zooms over
a few moments as I moved about. Ah well.
The light was not great anyway. Gives me
a reason to go back out there the next
sunny day if we have one soon. I feel a bit
ashamed now of wining about not being
able to get into Rachel Carson for my Lady
Slipper fix…who knew the creator had such
a splendor of Lady Slippers up that sleeve?
And I will be forever grateful to the unknown
man who took the time to tell me to keep
walking and keep looking left and down.
And I did go back for the video, which came out okay, though I am not sure it catches any more of the impression of all those Lady Slippers. 🙂
Sony Rx10iv at 24mm equivalent (video at about 80mm equivalent).
I am generally more specific with the location of my photos (and poems), but I have gone back and edited out all location info in this post and the poem. Not far from this patch there used to be patch growing the shade of a large pine on the edge of the pond, an unusual place to find them growing. This year, sometime in the past week, someone dug out every one of those plants, and left the empty holes. Lady Slippers are listed as a plant of “special concern” in Maine, grow very slowly and should not be dug up for transplant. In addition, they live in a symbiotic relationship with a fungus in a very particular type of soil, so chances of successful transplanting are very slim. Please. Leave them be!
Lupine season coming on…
Lupine. Kennebunkport, Maine. There is a poem that goes with this.
6/1
The lupines caught me by surprise
out Emmon’s way, late as the season
has seemed, and us with still a day
to go in May. The field at the fork
in the road there, where Goose Rocks
meets Guinea, where some years
the lupines make a purple pool under
the old maples and well out into the
hay, was coming into full flower already.
These last few days of 80 degree
weather have really rushed us on
toward June…only a few weeks ago
we saw our first rhodora and now
flag iris and geraniums are blooming
in the ditches and lupine in the fields.
There at the corner, they have moved
the old hay rake out next to the road
right among the lupines. It is is always
there in that field, and this year they
must have figured they would save
the trespass of all the photographers
who waded out and trampled hay
getting to it among the flowers further
out. Nothing like a field of lupines
(unless you see them among a white
birch grove as I did once in Acadia),
and I look forward every year to
catching them in bloom, there, out
Emmon’s way, in early June. If you
are going to caught by surprise, may
it always be something like lupines.
Sony Rx10iv at 24mm equivalent. HDR mode. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.