Posts in Category: flowers
6/10/2011: Pitcher Plant in Bloom
Continuing what appears to be developing into a theme: something different in the way of flowers. The Pitcher Plant is one of a very few carnivorous plants world-wide, and, as far as I know, the only one to grow in Maine. It is restricted to the few peat bogs that remain in odd corners. I am privileged to live about 15 miles from one of those corners: Saco Heath, and I try to visit it several times a year. June is mandatory as the Rhodora are in bloom, making a brave pink show over the upland sections of the bog. Due to my travel schedule this year, I missed the main bloom of the Rhodora, but I managed to catch the Pitcher Plants in full cry. I counted about 30 in bloom, that I could see from the boardwalk. I am certain there were more out of sight. They grow at the very edges of the raised areas that support the Jack Pine and Rhodora in the bog.
What we have above is a view of the flower from underneath, close up, and looking almost straight up. (This is when I appreciate the flip out LCD on the Nikon most.) Below you will see a more conventional view, showing the pitcher part of the plant and the intense maroon of the top of the flower.
The pitcher collects a bit of water, in which insects drown and decompose, providing essential nutrients to the plant in this nutrient poor environment. I told you it was different.
And here is a more conventional close up of the flower.
Nikon Coolpix P500. 1) Close Up Scene Mode, 32mm equivalent field of view, f3.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. 2) 190mm equivalent, f5.5 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160, Program mode, 3) Close Up Scene, 32mm equivalent, f3.7 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. Some color temperature adjustment.
6/7/2011: Lady Slippers Reprise (the first movement)
I posted this pic on the left, taken at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells ME, on 5/24, exactly two weeks ago. The shot above is the same stand of Lady Slippers, now in full bloom. All of the Lady Slippers this year seem a bit paler than last…as well as being almost three weeks late blooming…but this clump in particular is unusually pale. The light coming through them still brings out the delicate pinks in a way that reflected light never could.
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up Scene mode (assisted macro) at 32mm equivalent field of view, f3.7 @ 1/250th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
And just a slightly closer view.
6/5/2001: White Rugosa Rose, Happy Sunday!
Beach Rose, or Rosa Rugosa, is common along coast of New England, and especially on the dunes of southern Maine. It is not native. It was introduced for dune control and sea-side landscaping from Asia, where it is 
native to coasts of northern China, Korea, Japan, and southern Siberia. Rose Hip Jelly, a regional specialty, is made from the hips or pips (fruit) of the Beach Rose. Like many other introduced plants, it has been a mixed blessing…it certainly holds the dunes down and makes a bold show in lawns and boarders, but where it grows wild it has almost completely displaced native dune grasses and wildflowers.
Mostly you see the red variety. The white is a cultivar, and through I found it growing wild along the abandoned Bridle Path in Kennebunk, it almost certainly escaped from someone’s garden, or perhaps there was once a house along the Path just there, as there is evidence of ditching and draining and possible cultivation in the marsh near-by, and several other introduced ornamentals (including Hawthorn and Japanese Barberry) on the Bridle Path within sight of the patch of white roses.
The big showy white petals do, as I see it, very interesting things with light 
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up Scene mode (assisted macro). Both main shots at f8 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
And, for the Sunday thought…
If, as I strongly suspect, what we have along the Bridle Path just there, where the white Rugosa Rose blooms, are the remnants of someone’s gardening efforts from the last century (or even the one before…there is a particularly Victorian aspect to the mix of plants) it just goes to show how much power there is in the human intention…the power to alter the landscape for generations…well beyond the lifetime of the particular person of intent. And, of course, the problem status of the Rugosa Rose on New England dunes testifies to our inability to completely foresee the consequences of our intentions. We, as children of the creator, have, indeed a measure of the creator’s power…certainly enough to create our own versions of Eden where ever we go…but as creatures of time, who lack, while we are here on this earth, the eternal perspective, we can not see far enough ahead to know what exactly we do.
I am, to be honest, of two minds about this. One part of me recommends caution…that we ought, given our limitations, to take a “hands off” stance…to leave nature to her own devices, and not meddle with the landscape.
But part of me feels that managing the ever changing landscape is what we are here to do…that in fact…we will always be gardeners in the Eden the creator is creating…and that is right that we exercise our little bit of creativity in the moment…every moment…to tend and expand the landscape of creation. If the Rugosa Rose has run beyond any intention, it will require creative intent on the part of the children of the creator reign it in.
Too often, I think, we set man and nature against each other. Man made is unnatural. A garden is not nature. Too often, I think, we forget that man is part of nature…that our creative intent is force of nature as sure as wind and sun and rain. It is, as I see it, only by remembering that all the time, and passing it generation to generation, that we can overcome the limitations of our time-bound perspectives. We are children of the creator, charged with creation in the moment. If the Rugosa Rose is a problem, we need to get creative about it. In this moment.
Or that’s what I think this Sunday morning.
Happy Sunday. Enjoy what the light does with the petals of the White Rugosa Rose!
6/3/2011: Dandelion Relapse
It grieves me to report that brother Ingraham has suffered a dandelion relapse, or in the more colorful vernacular, “fallen off the dandelion wagon.” It turns out that even as he was writing yesterday’s moving dandelion confession (which I am certain moved you as much as it did me)…he was surreptitiously watching the sun creep toward a particularly lush patch of dandelion that grows in the corner of the yard where the neighbors walk their dog, and almost as soon as he hit the publish button, he threw on some clothes, unshowered, and ran out with his camera for another fix. Oh the weakness of the human flesh. Which is why, brothers, we need each other. Staunch friends, let Brother Ingraham be a lesson, and let us rally round and support him as he returns to sanity and sobriety after yet another dandelion binge. It could happen to any of us. Guard yourselves and each other. There are weeks yet until we are safe from temptation. Just as brother Ingraham so eloquently confessed…only yesterday. One day at a time!
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up (macro) scene mode, 32mm equivalent field of view. 1) f7.1 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160, 2) f5.6 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. The sun is directly behind the head of the dandelion in both shots. The flip out LCD came into play of course…they really do walk their dog there. 🙂
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness (with a touch of extra recovery and some fill light to balance the difficult exposure…but still the camera really did very well). Until next time. One day at a time!
6/2/2011: Dandelion Days
Is there really anything new to say about dandelion puffs? Still, who, with a macro capable camera in hand, can resist photographing them every year? There is always something in the light, or the background, or the ambiance to justify another shot. Oh shutter buttons! No one really needs any justification for another dandelion puff shot! They are reason unto themselves…sure as summer coming…sure as we love symmetry…sure as June rains which leave them shattered or June winds that send them sailing as single parachutes to plague the lawn-keepers of future summers…sure as the grass stained knees and aging backs that make every years’ harder to catch! Dandelion puff is. Therefore: dandelion puff pictures!
These are two very different shots, from a technique standpoint. Both use the Close Up scene mode on the Nikon Coolpix P500, which is a kind of assisted macro. 1) is at closest focus and the camera selected best macro setting on the zoom at 32mm equivalent field of view…taken from less than an inch away, in open shade. f3.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. 2) is zoomed out to 340mm equivalent (overriding the auto setting but still macro), taken from about 5 feet, obviously in full sun. f5.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
I will not claim that these satisfy my dandelion puff addiction for this year…we still have weeks of temptation facing us…but for today they are sufficient.
5/29/2011: Rhodora
Happy Sunday!
Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1803–1882
The Rhodora
On Being Asked Whence Is the Flower
IN May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.
I could not have said it better myself! 🙂 And there is even a Sunday thought in there. I have been photographing Rhodora every spring for years and this is the first time I have come across this poem.
The Rhodora, just a few scattered plants, was in bloom along the edge of a little marshy pond near my home in Kennebunk. If we ever get another sunny day (which is in some doubt in southern Maine this year) I want to go to Saco Heath, about 15 miles from here where it blooms in mass.
For now, these few will do! As I am sure Ralph Waldo would agree.
Nikon Coolpix P500 1) 32mm (Close Up mode for macro), f5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160, 2) 32mm (Close Up mode for Macro) f5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
5/24/2011: Lady Slippers v.2011
As I mentioned on Sunday, our wildflowers are about 3 weeks late here in Southern Maine. Lady Slippers are generally in full bloom on Mother’s Day. This year, this past Saturday at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Headquarters, all but a few were still in the green bud stage as above…still more than a few sunny days away from bloom…and we aren’t expecting any sun until at least Thursday of this week. Maybe next weekend they will have popped.
There is one spot, on the back side of the loop trail at Rachel Carson, where they have cut a new opening out to the marsh and built a new deck…new two years ago that is. Below the deck, on the slope facing the sun most of the morning, is where Lady Slippers will first be in bloom if they are in bloom anywhere, and this year was no exception. I found 5 or 6 plants and 6 or 7 blooms…but oh how pale compared to last spring’s show. Still, they are always magnificent. Ours are the Pink variety.
The new camera allows an even closer approach than last year, and I took advantage of all the macro it has to offer in the second and fifth shots. This new lens has wonderful bokeh, assisted, I suspect by a little in camera digital wizardry!
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up Scene mode, 32mm equivalent field of view at anything from 6 inches to 3/4 inch. All images at f3.7 and ISO 160, shutter speeds from 1/200th to 1/640th.
Processed for Clarity and Sharpness in Lightroom. (I have added a bit on the Lightroom processing required with the new camera on my Lightroom processing page here or via the link in the header.)
5/22/2011: Painted Trillium
Happy Sunday! Normally by the 22nd of May, you only find a few late blooming Trillium, but our spring wildflowers are running almost 3 weeks late in Southern Maine this year, and a visit to Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge head-quarters yesterday, during our first break after 6 days of steady rain, turned them up in full bloom. We have the Painted variety here, though I grew up with the Red Trillium in up-state New York. My mother called it blood-root…I thought because of the color of the flower…but it turns out that in herbal medicine the rhizome is sometimes used to treat female blood aliments. There is another plant actually called bloodroot, but my mother often used the names for plants and birds that were common in rural up-state New York, the names she grew up with, rather than those found in any reference book. It was years before I realized that her wild canary was actually a Common Goldfinch.
And in researching Trillium this morning, I found that what look like leaves above ground are actually bracts, with the true leaves occurring underground, wrapping the rhizome. The bracts of Trillium do, unlike some brachs, actually act like leaves, since they have chlorophyll and are the only source of food for the plant…stranger and stranger.
These two shots, by the way, are at opposite extremes. The first was taken with macro at the “best” setting of 32mm equivalent field of view (best as selected by the Macro Scene Mode: the setting that gives closest focus and the largest image scale), and the second was taken with macro at the long end of the zoom…810mm equivalent…since the flowers were beyond easy reach behind a rail. Macro as set by the camera allows you to get within 2 cm, or about 3/4 inch, for views like the one below.
All the shots were handheld.
Nikon Coolpix P500, 1) and 3) Macro at 32mm equivalent, 3) Macro at 810mm equivalent. 1) f3.7 @ 1/400th @ ISO 160, 2) f5.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160, and 3) f3.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. Macro mode evidently does some digital trickery to extend the foreground depth of field, while throwing the background further out of focus than it would normally be, as all three shots have more of the look of macros taken with larger sensors and conventional macro lenses…not with a small senor, short focal length, Point and Shoot.
And for Sunday: I picked the Trilliums this morning, from among recent images, for their beauty and for some vague association in my mind with the trinity…and with incarnation. The three pure white petals stained purple red, blood red, at the center. Maybe it is kind of abstract…but to me that is the wonder of the incarnation…purity that bleeds, producing beauty. But the real blessing came in learning a bit more about the plant…for instance it is illegal to pick it in many states and some provinces of Canada…and in remembering my mother, when I was maybe 6 or 7 at the oldest, taking me out to the woods in the spring to look for what she called blood-root. She would never let me pick it either. It was just something she enjoyed finding, and took the time to show me. And that too, is the wonder of incarnation. Love in the blood.
5/8/2011: Cherry. Happy Sunday. Happy Mother’s Day!
When we bought our home in Kennebunk, 16 years ago, I went to the Dollar Store in Wells, and bought a few plants for the yard. I paid $1.00 for a little stick with a few roots, about 1/2 inch through at its thickest, more dead than alive, and brought it home and planted it near the stump of what had clearly been a very large pine tree. My wife made some attempt to keep it pruned over the years, but today the trunk is 14 inches through and it stands taller then the peak of the roof of our story-and-a-half home. Each year it throws more blossoms: delicate and beautiful. Each year I look at it and remember that hopeless stick I rescued from a pile at the Dollar Store…and marvel that it has turned into this majestic tree that showers us with blossoms as the Creator showers us with blessings. Since the height of its bloom is always around Mother’s Day, it serves as a celebration of our time in our home, and of the woman who makes it one, my wife Carol. Happy Mother’s Day.
And that is really all the Sunday thought I have…and all I need. Thank you God, for this life we live together, for our children, for our home, for the absolute blessing and miracle of Cherry blossoms from a half dead stick. Who would have believed?
Nikon Coolpix P500. Processed for clarity and sharpness in Lightroom.
Happy Sunday. Happy Mother’s Day.
4/25/2011: Maple Flowers
The Maples are red. Not the leaves this season, but the flowers. From a distance it is a subtle red that teases the eye, except where the maples mass, and then it can be quite striking. Even standing right under a tree the flowers are more a promise than a reality. Only when you get right in close do you see them for what they are…things of real beauty. These are wet with a heavy dew.
Nikon Coolpix P500 on macro, 1) 620mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160, 2) 115mm, f4.7 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160, and 3) 68mm, f4.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. Program mode.
The three shots show the different effects of macro at various settings of the zoom, visible most clearly in the bokeh.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. (The Nikon takes a very similar processing to my Canon SX20IS.)