From “Clematis” in A Family of Flowers: Clematis and the Ranunculaceae by Deborah Kellaway:
“Clematis is called the ‘Queen of Climbers’. It is also queen of the whole family of Ranunculaceae. Like all monarchs, it stands a little apart from the others and above them: unlike almost all its relations, it knows how to climb. You can buy it at any garden centre in the land. There will be a row of young, pot grown plants tied to neat bamboos, sometimes upright, sometimes toppled over in the wind….
“Closed, the bud of a species clematis is globular, that of a large-flowered hybrid is long and pointed, often with a suggestion of concertina pleats. There is a silvery bloom on these pointed buds with just a hint of the colour which will later be revealed on the other side. Open, the points of the bud divide to supply the points of the star: sometimes six-pointed, sometimes eight, according to how many sepals there are; in the middle of every clematis flower is the burst of stamens that is characteristic of the buttercup family…. In every case the contrasting stamens give sparkle to the flower….”
From “A Living Palette” in Forever Beyond Us: Poems by Errol Miller:
A little country place
with deep dark soil and children
round about the knee, a limestone stream
rushing into infinity and the daily paper
delivered every day on time, you construct
the geometric pattern of thought
forgetting about trouble, you construct
a narrow white trellis for roses
and wait for tomorrow, this is the Old South
and New England and the Midwest and the North
you take a path leading away from the garden
you want to make a copy of today
a brick wall to hold back the future, you go
past the clematis vine and the garlic patch
you paint a large blue mural…
and you remember how much
you love this time, this place.
Hello!
This is the second of two posts featuring Clematis flowers that live in a hugemungous pot in my backyard. The first post is Clematis Abundance (1 of 3).
For each of the photos in this second post, I aimed the camera toward a single flower with the goal of producing images where the center structures were sharply focused. In the two varieties I have, that center structure is between one and two inches in diameter, a size that’s typical of Clematis flowers with large blooms. To get adequate front-to-back detail in closeup or macro shots like this, I experimented with numerous aperture settings to adjust depth of field, threw out many experiments I wasn’t satisfied with, and occasionally stepped farther back from the flower then (cheated a little and) cropped the image to fill more of the frame.
The structure is well-described in the excerpt at the top of this post as a “burst of stamens that is characteristic of the buttercup family…. In every case the contrasting stamens give sparkle to the flower.” The “burst of stamens” is a distinctive feature; its colors often contrast with those of the rest of the flower’s colors; and the “sparkle” described in the excerpt comes from a combination of the smooth texture of the stamens and the pollen dust scattered on each stamen’s tip. The stamens’ smooth texture gives each one a bit of a glow, even in diffused lighting, and they’re also very reflective — so you will see that the center structure overall will reflect some yellow or green tones wherever the flower is close to the deep green of nearby twists of leafy vines.
Thanks for taking a look!
