Posts in Category: flowers
Thistle!
Thistle, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Titusville FL
I saw these giant thistles in bloom along the first mile of Blackpoint Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in Titusville Florida every time I drove the loop, but it was not until my last visit of the trip that I forced myself to take a moment for a photo. I think they are just Bull Thistle, a common weed, but the specimens on Blackpoint were certainly spectacular. This was my 3rd and final thistle stop. I pulled over because of the particularly intense color but was rewarded with the perfect contrast in the Florida White feeding deep in the bloom.
Sony Rx10iii at 24mm equivalent field of view. Program mode. f4 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Processed in Polarr on my iPad Pro.
Pitcher Plant
Pitcher Plant, Saco Heath, Saco Maine
I took the new Ford C-Max Hybrid on its maiden photoprowl yesterday…a swing north to Saco Heath, then cross-lots on back roads to Route 1 and eventually to Cascade Falls and back home. I am not sure I have been to the Heath this season at all. I know I missed the early bloom of Rhodora and Sheep Laurel and High-bush Blueberry, and the Grass Pink Orchids. I was surprised to find the Pitcher Plants in full bloom. I had remembered them as early bloomers, but I was happy to be proved wrong. Not only were they in bloom, but there were more than I have ever seen on the Heath.
Saco Heath, if you are just tuning in, is a raised peat bog, where the peat and sphagnum moss have risen above the level of the ground water. It is one of a very few in Maine and the only one in Southern Maine. The environment in a peat bog is highly acidic and very poor in nutrients, so it is populated by a group of rare plants that are specialized to nutrient-poor soils, and by stunted Pitch Pines. There a slightly higher section of the bog that supports one of the only stands of Atlantic White Cedar in Maine. The area is protected by the Nature Conservancy, and by the State of Maine. A boardwalk, renewed over the past several summers by the Civilian Conservation Corps, runs right across the heath to a loop of trail in the Cedar stand.
Pitcher Plants survive in the nutrient poor sphagnum surface by capturing and digesting insects. They are carnivores. The “pitcher”, a tube of adapted leaves, contains a digestive fluid at the bottom. Bugs crawl or fall in and contribute most of the nutrients the plant needs. The flower is very large (3-4 inches across), on a tall stalk, and more “interesting” than “beautiful”. As I say, there were many of them along the more raised sections of the boardwalk in the Pitch Pine hummock, and along the edges of the White Cedar hummock.
Sony RX10iii. The first shot is a telephoto macro and the bottom side-view is a wide angle macro. Exposure varied. I was shooting in Program and shutter speeds were from 1/60th for the pitcher shot to 1/320th for the telephoto. ISO ranged from 100 to 250. All shots at f4. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage.
Northern Blazing Star
Northern Blazing Star, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W. Kennebunk Maine.
It is an amazing show when the Northern Blazing Star are in full bloom on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area…as they will be in a few weeks…but this early, when there are only a few plants in bloom, I generally take better, closer, looks at this beautiful flower. And, of course, not so much a flower as a cluster of tiny flowers making up a thistle like head. In this shot you can appreciate the beauty of the individual flowers.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/640th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed and cropped slightly for composition in Lightroom.
Bee Fly on Blazing Star. Happy Sunday!
Bee Fly on Northern Blazing Star, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W. Kennebunk Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
I am rapidly approaching 69 years old (next month) so I am always surprised and delighted to discover something in the world right at my doorstep that I have never seen before. Seen is a tricky word. I suspect that I have seen Bee Flies before now…but I certainly never looked at them. I did not know they existed. If fact, when I bent down to take a photo of this very early Northern Blazing Star, in flower on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area yesterday, I though I was looking at a bee. It is furry like a bee. It has superficially bee-like wings. It was behaving like a bee…but I knew it was no bee I had ever seen before. I had certainly never seen a bee that color or with that long a proboscis. A little googling (small hairy bee with long proboscis) brought up the Bee Fly family. Ah…not a bee at all. A bee mimic. And a bee parasite. (The female lays her eggs at the mouth of the hive of ground nesting bees, and the fly larva attack the larva of the bees.) There are many species of Bee Flys in North America (over 4500 world-wide)…all I can say for certain is that this is NOT the most common of them: the Greater or Large Bee Fly, which is sometimes called the Dark Edged Bee Fly because the wings are dark edged and patterned like those of a hummingbird moth.
I was also surprised, by the way, at the number of Northern Blazing Star plants in bloom already on the Plains. While it is far from the show I expect in two weeks (the normal timing of the bloom), our unusually hot July must have forced many plants into bloom early. The Blazing Star on the Kennebunk Plains is, as far as I am concerned, one of the highlights of the natural seasons here in southern Maine. It is endangered in most of North America, and the Kennebunk Plains is one of the few places it still grows in abundance. The Plains can be purple with it in mid-August.
So that was two surprises for yesterday…and one “the surprise of a lifetime” in that it was my first real look at Bee Fly.
And of course that is the thing about the generous eye…always open and ready to be surprised. Another translation of what Jesus said about eyes, from The Message Bible, is “‘If you live wide–eyed in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light.” 69 years on the planet, and I can still be surprised by the living nature around me…by God’s loving invention…I am still discovering new wonders. And each new wonder only confirms and strengthens my belief. This is good. And it is my hope for you, whatever your age, this Sunday!
Day Lily
Day Lily, our yard, Kennebunk Maine
Our small yellow Day Lilies have been in bloom for a week in the front garden, but these showy blooms at the end of the drive just bloomed yesterday. We were trying to figure out where they came from. I might have bought them last year, and they might have been transferred from another bed where they were not doing well, but at any rate, they are new at the end of the drive this year…and doing very well there. 🙂 Greeting guests. Like the folks at the Walmart door. Maybe. Certainly just as cheerful as the best of them. They were in deep afternoon shadow when I got around to photographing them.
Sony RX10iii at 88mm equivalent. 1/40th @ ISO 250 @ f5.6. Program Shift for greater depth of field. Processed in Lightroom (cropped slightly and a small amount of vignette added).
Wood Lily, Blueberries, and Little Green Metallic Bees. Happy Sunday!
Wood Lily, Blueberries, Little Green Metallic Bees, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W. Kennebunk Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
There are still lots of Wood Lilies in bloom out on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area. I have only explored the Day Brook Pond side this summer so far, but, despite earlier impressions, the Wood Lily bloom is at least as good as last year, and maybe better. (It is about a week late, which contributed to my earlier disappointment.) Yesterday, I found a bunch growing right in among the ripe blueberries and wanted to frame both the blue and the bright red/orange in the same shot, but as I focused I noticed the Green Metallic Bees at work gathering the abundant pollen of the flower. I have shots where I adjusted the camera’s program to get the blueberries in better focus for better color contrast, but for this shot I was after the motion of the bees, so I let the camera choose a high shutter speed. (Photography, like most things in life, is all about choices and balance.) I remember finding my first Green Metallic Bee among the flowers of our yard a few years ago, and being totally amazed that such a creature could exist. In this shot we have two species, one much smaller than the already small Green Metallic, but clearly in the same family.
This shot, to my eye, has captured a vivid slice of life…full of a rich variety of color, form, and texture, and alive with energy. But then, so often, that is what the generous eye sees in the world around us…life both abundant and bright with promise…with the energy of the spirit at work in the world. And there is a unity. The bees are not separate from the flowers. As they gather the pollen of one plant and carry it to another, they are an essential part of the Wood Lilies’ life…there would be no more Wood Lilies without their action. Even the way the Wood Lilies and Blueberries are growing together must serve both…it is always about choices and balance…fulfilling the spirit’s vision of abundant life. If you push back behind the surface of this second, or any second, you become aware of the pure radiant light of creation at the center…expanding, expressing itself in form and color and texture, in all that lives and all that is…expressing itself with intelligence (choice and balance) and with all embracing love. You become aware of God. And God’s light fills you, not from the outside in, but from the inside out, as you realize yourself as another expression of the creative love and light that is all in all. Choice and balance…unity. Generosity.
Happy Sunday! And may your eye be generous.
Wood Lilies again
Wood Lilies, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, Maine
I hope you don’t mind another Wood Lily shot. The season is short and I have to get my shots in while they bloom 🙂 This cluster of three, at Day Brook Pond on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, with the petals still wet from overnight rains, shows off the lily at its best.
Sony RX10iii at 135mm equivalent field of view. Some program shift for depth of field. f6.3 @ 1/320th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom.
Wood Lilies after rain.
Wood Lily, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W. Kennebunk Maine
We finally got some much-needed rain in Southern Maine over the weekend, and I hoped that it would pop the Wood Lilies out on the Kennebunk Plains. I had been disappointed with the show last week, when, if it followed past patterns, it should have been at its height. A visit to the Plains yesterday did not disappoint. Where there were single blossoms before the rain, there are now good stands similar to last year’s bloom. In one small area we found all three color varieties, from deep red to this bright “safety-vest” orange. The deep orange variety continues to dominate, but at least this year, all three are showing. This close up of a bloom still wet from overnight rains, also shows off the purple in the stamen, anthers, and in the dots on the base of leaves, but the light orange makes the contrast between the yellow base of the petals and the upper petals less obvious.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm. 1/80 @ ISO 100 @ f8 (program shift for greater depth of field). Processed in Lightroom.
Wood Lily. Happy Sunday!
Wood Lily, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
I have been posting images from our trip to Honduras for the past two weeks now. I have been home a week already. Of course I have been out around home a few times too. 🙂 I had to check for dragons and damsels and for the Wood Lilies at Day Brook Pond for one thing. This is Wood Lily season, and this week last year, there were the best stands of Wood Lily out on the Kennebunk Plains that I have ever seen. We have had a long dry spell in Maine this year, and the flowers are much less numerous, and somewhat late to bloom, but there were a few when I visited on Wednesday. It rained yesterday, and it is raining hard at the moment. That may be just what the Wood Lilies need to pop out in full display. We will see tomorrow when I get back to the Kennebunk Plains.
It would take an ungenerous eye indeed not to appreciate the beauty of the Wood Lily. They grow sparsely in open shade along the edges and in the clearings in the forest, and out in full sun on the Plains. They appear to like sandy soil, but with a rich mix of humus. They range from deep red (rare in Maine) to the bright orange caught in this image, always touched with yellow at the base of the petals, and spattered with purple/brown spots. The prominent Stigma and Stamens are tall and graceful, with large velvety Anthers that produce a lot of pollen. They attract many insects, like the little Green Metalic Bee you see on the petal at the right.
Wood Lilies are the essence of a wild flower. They don’t do well in cultivation, so they have rarely been tamed to ornament our yards and grounds. They grow where they will, and boom only to suit themselves, briefly. You have to go out into the woods and uncultivated fields at just the right time to see them. I had never seen one until about 5 years ago when I found two growing along the Kennebunk Bridle Path. I had no idea they bloomed in such numbers on the Kennebunk Plains until 3 years ago when that bright flash of orange drew me out away from the road. Now I go look for them every year. While they are apparently doing well in Maine, they are threatened or endangered in many states, as true wild-lands grow more rare. To me, they will always be a celebration of God’s generosity of spirit and sense of wild beauty. One more reason to be thankful and happy on this Sunday. May you find the Wood Lilies in bloom, and always be filled with light.
Poppies
Giant Poppies, Sargentville Maine
Deep in the overgrown flower beds at Edgehill House in Sargentville Maine, these giant Poppies burst out on the second day of our visit. Just a single flower first, and then more each day. I think of these a very “old fashioned” flowers…you don’t see them in yards in Maine much these days. They were far into the jungle of Beebalm and thistle so this is a moderate telephoto shot, with lots of Program Shift to increase depth of field enough to catch both the two flowers in the foreground and the single flower in the background in focus.
Sony RX10iii in-camera HDR at 400mm equivalent field of view. Nominal exposure: 1/125th @ ISO 100 @ f13. Processed in Lightroom.