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Here and There…Now and Then |
Sunset Colors
I don’t have a lot to say about this picture, my third posted for July 19. We were stopping to see a friend and this was what the sky looked like as we got there. This was taken with a 100mm lens. The sky was mostly dark at this point and there was just this one small area of color, but what color it was! Wonderful.
Cotinis nitida (Green June Beetle)
I saw a new insect today. Well, not technically a new insect, but one I haven’t photographed before. This is a fairly large beetle, about an inch long. It was up on the buddleia bush and I was able to get a reasonably sharp picture, although not as sharp as I’d like. It’s a little like a giant Japanese beetle, but it’s a green June beetle, Cotinis nitida, a North American native. They are generally considered to be pests, because their larvae eat the roots of many plants including grasses and ornamentals.
Black-eyed Susans
Here’s another black-eyed Susan picture. They sure do well in our yard, and we might need to cut them back a bit after they finish blooming, so that they don’t take over completely. The black-eyed Susan is the state flower of Maryland, by the way and in case you didn’t know. A good choice, I think. There are a couple dozen Rudbeckia species and they are named after Olof Rudbeck the Younger (1660-1740) and his father, Olof Rudbeck the Elder (1630-1702), both professors of botany at Uppsala University. The name was given by Carolus Linnaeus, who was their student.