Flowers and Plants

Yellow Flowers

On Muncaster Mill Road, between Magruder High School and where it crosses the ICC and between those two roads there is a field of yellow flowers. I assume someone planted them but it isn’t clear who would have done so. I’ve driven past it many times over the years and finally decided to stop today and take some pictures. I’m not sure what sort of flowers they are but they are quite pretty, particularly en masse. Getting a photograph that conveys that was a bit difficult because once you are out in them, they are tall enough that you cannot see them all. Also, I tried to keep the highway out of the picture.

Drying Black-eyed Susan

The black-eyed Susans are fading, as I mentioned two weeks ago. They still have a fair amount of color but are starting to dry up. Personally, I think they still look pretty nice in their semi-dried out state. This is one in a large patch growing in the middle of our back yard. There was a small patch here last year but with the two trees that used to shade it now gone, the patch has become very vigorous. I’m not sure what we’ll do there next year, but it seems like a good spot for some sun-loving things. More roses, perhaps.

Pine Cones

Cathy and I went for a short walk this afternoon, walking around my office building a few times. It was a pretty day, on the border between warm and hot. The sky was a rare, deep blue and very clear. As we walked I had my camera with me (like you do) and was looking for things to photograph. These pine needles and cones against the blue sky caught my eye, so that’s what you get for today. I like this photograph, but mostly for the green of the needles against the blue of the sky.

Dead Flowers

I’ve posted plenty of flower pictures here. Flowers are one of my favorite subjects, along with the critters that crawl on and fly around them. In 2010 I took a picture of some roses and other flowers in this vase that turned out to be one of the nicer pictures I’ve ever taken. It is certainly my favorite still life out of all that I’ve taken.

Today’s picture is of flowers that have been sitting a little too long. They looked very nice when they were put in this vase, but that was ten days ago. They still have a bit of color but have faded a bit. I probably should have worked harder to get a uniform background instead of having the far edge of the table in the frame. Still, I kind of like the composition and the blue tablecloth background with the faded pastels of the flowers. There are roses (the larger pink flowers), Verbina bonariensis (which have turned pretty completely brown), both white and purple Conoclinium coelestinum (which are mostly still white and purple), and two coneflowers (with their large, cone-like seed heads.

Berries of Solanum dulcamara (Bittersweet Nightshade)

Now that I’ve finished posting pictures from our two back to back vacations at the beach and England, I’ll be returning to the more mundane pictures taken in our back yard, etc. As you have long since learned, I’m sure, our lives are not particularly exciting. If you’re willing to stop by from time to time, I’m happy to have you.

The picture today is of the berries of the bittersweet nightshade, Solanum dulcamara. If they look like little tomatoes, well they are in the same genus and fairly closely related to both tomatoes and potatoes.

Dionaea muscipula (Venus Flytrap)

Here’s a second picture from July 30, again from the Green Swamp in southern North Carolina. The first year we visited we saw a lot of Venus flytraps. The second year it was very dry and we didn’t see any at all. Last year and this they were back in large numbers and we stopped to get a few new pictures. They are a bit hard to photograph, partly because they are so small.

Here you can see a few open “traps” as well as one that has closed, presumably on some prey.

Lilium catesbaei (Pine Lily)

For the last few years we’ve been making a trek to the Green Swamp when we’ve come to the beach. In the past it’s been very hot, usually in the upper 90s and very humid. This year was a bit different. It was still very humid but the temperature was somewhere in the mid 80s. Still hot and sticky but not nearly so oppressive. On the other hand, the mosquitoes were much worse this year than in the past.

One flower we haven’t seen on prior visits is the pine lily, Lilium catesbaei. There were a few of them out, mostly finishing up their blooming period. This one still looked quite nice, though. They are very striking in a place where green is such a dominant color.

Bonus points for the spider in the picture. I didn’t see him when I took it.

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.

Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta)

It was a long but somehow beautiful day to end a long week. We celebrated a life and we welcomed our Daughter home from her first foreign trip without us (a little tired but not too much the worse for wear). I took a few pictures in the yard, including a few of the black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) which are coming into their own, blooming profusely.

My camera doesn’t handle white balance very well in a picture like this, with so much bright yellow. I really need to find my neutral grey card so I can take a reading and set the white balance properly. This looks about right, though.

Lilium ‘Stargazer’ (The Stargazer Lily)

We have day lilies (Hemerocallis), tiger lilies (Lilium lancifolium), and a few Asiatic lilies in our yard and they are all beautiful in their way. They are mostly orange, although we have a few yellow day lilies. Although they were formerly considered to be in the same family as lilies, day lilies are not even in the same order any more. Anyway, I group them together in my mind, because they have somewhat similar flowers and of course the names are a link.

This flower, though, stands alone (in our yard, anyway). It is so different in terms of color that it seems less like the other true lilies than do the day lilies. It’s currently growing in a pot but we’ll be planting it when we get a chance. At least that’s the theory. We really need a small patch of these, not just one, but one thing at a time.

Dark Orange Day Lily

It was a beautiful rainy day today, considerably cooler although still fairly muggy. I was sort of busy at work so I didn’t get out. When I got home I took a picture I’ve been meaning to take for a while. I like day lilies in all their forms but I think this is one of my very favorites. I really love the deep orange, which is much more striking then the plain bright orange of the “standard” variety. The droplets of water on the petals are a small bonus.

Thelesperma Flowers

I didn’t take a lot of pictures today but did get out into the back garden of some friends. This is a Thelesperma, probably T. filifolium (stiff greenthread) growing there. It is a close relative to Coreopsis. In fact, until recently it was considered to be part of that genus. To be honest (hey, why not), I’m not completely sure this isn’t a Coreopsis, but I think I have it labeled right. Anyway, it is a nice bi-colored hybrid and I like the airiness of the photograph.

Wild Raspberries

I found a great patch of wild raspberries today and enjoyed about a pint of them before moving on. It’s all I had for lunch today, but it was a pretty sweet lunch. I think I’ll come back with a container and collect more in the next couple of days.

You’ll forgive me if I don’t mention where this patch happens to be located. There are a lot of berries but not enough, I’m sorry to say, to share with too many others. I’ll be watching to see if I’m followed.

Monarda (Bergamot)

The bergamot flowers in our back garden provide a nice splash of red that’s quite obvious from the house. As you get closer you might notice a small swarm of tiny flies around them. The flies land on the flowers occasionally but are easier to see when they land on the leaves. Even then, it’s hard to get close enough to capture them very well. In addition to insect pictures, I also took a few of the flower parts. The cluster of flowers in the bergamot (Monarda) head blooms over time. In this picture, the flowers in the center are finished and the flowers around the rim, with their bright red petals, are in bloom.