"Pay attention to the world." -- Susan Sontag
 

Category: oakland cemetery

Iris Domestica Fireworks (1 of 2)

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From “Perennials for Summer Bloom” in Sunbelt Gardening: Success in Hot-Weather Climates by Tom Peace:

“Blackberry lily (Belamcanda chinensis) is, despite its deceptive common name, actually a member of the iris family. Vigorous, healthy fans of leaves arise from a small rhizome that expands only slowly over time and grows to two feet tall before blooming….

“The valuable foliage is then embellished by open, branched flower stalks rising above the leaves, producing a succession of orange-and-red-spotted, six-petaled blooms. (Hybrids called candy lilies expand the color range to yellow and purples.)

“The effect is like slow-motion fireworks, but the show doesn’t stop there. Swollen seedpods develop through late summer and split open in fall to reveal berrylike clusters of shiny black seeds. These readily germinate the following spring, increasing the size of Belamcanda colonies.”

From “Blackberry Lily” in Lilies and Related Flowers by Brian Mathew, illustrations by Pierre-Joseph Redoute:

“This showy member of the iris family is very closely allied to the true irises and indeed will hybridize with Iris dichotoma to produce a remarkable range of intermediate offspring. Belamcanda chinensis is the only species in the genus. The flower, with its six equal perianth segments and three slender style branches, is in fact quite different in structure from that of an iris, in which the six perianth segment are separated into falls and standards and the style branches are flattened and petal-like. The fruits also are rather distinctive, with capsules opening to reveal large black seeds; hence the name Blackberry Lily used in some countries.

“Like Iris, Belamcanda produces a fan of flat leaves from a small rhizome and in summer sends up a branching flower stem from the centre of the leaf cluster. This stem can reach 2.5 metres in wild specimens, but it is usually much less than this in cultivation. Each flower is of rather short duration, but because there is a succession of them, quite a striking display is produced over a considerable period of time. Although individual plants are usually short-lived, seeds are freely produced and the young plants rapidly reach maturity. Belamcanda is a native of China, Japan, Taiwan and the Himalayan region….

“The root has been used to cure sore throats and fevers and is also recommended as an antidote to poisons, in particular the bite of a cobra.”

Hello!

I had never really thought of these flowers as “slow-motion fireworks” — as they’re described in the first quotation above — but, you know, the description fits. And it fairly well applies to my photos below of Iris domestica from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens, where these little delights tend to grow at the very outer edges of tree-shade, so pick up a lot of filtered sunlight or backlighting. The result is that they glow against dark backgrounds, and the camera does a nice job of capturing the flower petal highlights while keeping the colors and shapes of the stems and buds intact.

As is often the case with popular flowers, you can choose a common name for this one from a long list. Leopard Lily, Leopard Flower, or Blackberry Lily are frequently used, but you could also pick Candy Lily, Freckle Face, Butterfly Lily, or Fire Lily; or replace “lily” with “iris” and have a whole new set of names. They all reflect either the color pattern or shape of the flowers, or (for Blackberry Lily) the plant’s habit of producing fat seedpods that turn black late in the season. “Lily” has stuck as part of the plant’s moniker, though — as we all know, don’t we? — it’s actually an iris. Iris domestica is its proper current scientific name; but that’s a recent enough development in botanical history that the previous scientific name — Belamcanda chinensis — hangs around in a lot of botany or gardening books and other sources. I wrote about the name change history last year: see Iris Domestica, the Leopard Flower or Blackberry Lily (1 of 3) if you would like to read more about it.

With that previous set of photos, I also wrote about encountering these irises shortly after a long-duration high-wind thunderstorm had passed through the neighborhood, bending many of them to the ground. Some had obviously been broken or uprooted, with the flowers still intact, stems split like cut flowers in a vase. I wondered if they’d return this year, so was glad to find them — even as a less robust crop than I had seen previously. Then again, the presence of fewer flowers gave me a chance to capture singular stems and flowers against their shaded black or dark green backgrounds, so for The Photographer, that worked out nicely.

Thanks for taking a look!

Daylily Mixer: Red, Purple, and Yellow Daylilies

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From “Gardening” in So Late, So Soon by Linda K. Anderson:

“Ahhh, gardening. I adore digging in the dirt, especially in my North Carolina garden. I’m a good gardener, probably more from diligence and determination than a green thumb. Nature is so giving….

“With my hands in the dirt and the sun warming my back, I soak in the silence, or hum with the buzzing of a bee, and breathe the subtle scent of honeysuckle twining on the fence. Plucking, pulling, and weeding works muscles needing the activity. I make a cavity for a seed to take root while a Purple Finch lands softly five feet from me to scratch the earth, a bee sucks nectar from a red daylily, and a silky breeze kisses my cheek and stirs my hair….

“How rich I am with all this beauty. I feel at home with nature, in a peaceful small world of my own. Feeling at home and welcome.”

From “Purple Daylily” in Hidden Among the Petals by Beverly Hughes:

“In 1997, a fascinating event took place for me when I was in a greenhouse in Springfield, Delaware County in Pennsylvania. I thought that the only daylilies that existed were the wild orange ones that grew along the roadside during the summer. From my personal observation of growing certain purple and pink daylilies, they begin to start opening about 1:00 a.m. in the morning and maintain its beautiful color and texture until about 11:00 a.m. Then the flower tissue and color begins to breakdown, and by sundown, the bloom closes forever.”

From “Hemerocallis thunbergii Baker” in Hemerocallis, The Daylily by R. W. Munson, Jr.:

“A daylily was mentioned under the name Hemerocallis thunbergii by Peter Barr in 1873, as a plant that starts to flower somewhat later then H. fulva (the Europa Daylily), has flowers a clear, beautiful, yellow color, and is 3 ft. tall. This plant was first listed for sale in the catalog of Barr and Sugden in 1873….

“Plants of Thunberg’s Daylily, of the clone widely cultivated and believed to be that named by [John Gilbert] Baker, have a robust and compact habit of growth and are strongly spreading in the crown by short, erect branches. The roots are somewhat enlarged and fleshy. The foliage is medium dark green and ascending-spreading to a general level of about 30 in., and dies in late autumn, usually not until after frost. The scapes are numerous, slender, stiffly erect to a height of about 45 in., and are well-branched above. The flowers are lemon-yellow in color with the tube and the outside of the sepals strongly tinged green…. Flowering is in midsummer; in New York it blooms in July along with the Europa Daylily and after plants of H. flava and H. minor have ceased to bloom….

“Thunberg’s Daylily has an excellent robust habit, attractive dark green foliage, and an abundance of flowers…. Thunberg’s Daylily is rather widely known in American gardens.”

Hello!

Here we wrap up daylily photography for 2024 (unless I find some late-bloomers) with three collections, of red, purple, and yellow daylilies.

I found the plants with large yellow flowers in more woodsy areas of Oakland Cemetery’s gardens — growing in the sunny outer edges of some plots of land filled with large trees or shrubs. That they bloomed so well in partly sunny areas suggested that I might be able to grow them in my own mostly-shade garden, so perhaps next spring I’ll look for some yellow companions for my Witch’s Hand Daylilies.

I came across the red and purple daylilies on my way out of the gardens one day, after having already spent a couple of hours in the hot sun on a photography excursion. Both batches were clearly in the late stages of their blooming season, but I held off my desire to get back into air-conditioning and got them to pose for photos. The purple ones probably had only a few more days of blooming left, but I thought it was interesting that — you can see this in the first three photos — the purple color fades to blue as the flower petals wither. While I might have normally skipped photographing flowers with half-dead petals, I liked the contrast between the purple and blue so kept a few of them in my collection.

Thanks for taking a look!

Photographing Pink Daylilies

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From A Passion for Daylilies: The Flowers and the People by Sydney Eddison:

“In 1938, Elizabeth Nesmith, a pioneer breeder from Massachusetts, created an exciting new ‘pink’ daylily which she named ‘Sweetbriar‘. This early pink along with ‘Hyperion‘ weaves a soft rosy orange and pale yellow theme among the Aurelian hybrid lilies, sunflowers, and exclamation marks of lythrum at the back of my border….

“Over the years, these and other vigorous cultivars that once consisted of a modest fan of leaves and a single scape bearing only a few blossoms have developed into great clumps of graceful foliage surmounted by bushel basket loads of flowers. Most clumps have subsequently been divided innumerable times, with the result that I have more daylilies than I know what to do with. But no matter how crowded the perennial border becomes, I can never resist adding more. Nor do I discard the old ones. I could never bring myself to abandon ‘Norwegian Lass‘, which has large, open blossoms the color of clotted cream, or give up ‘Melody Lane‘, a vigorous yellow airbrushed with paprika — both products of the fifties….”

From “Photographing Daylilies” in The Illustrated Guide to Daylilies by Oliver Billingslea:

“[As] photographers we must have an eye for [color] and for rendering it accurately…. [It] is best to photograph most daylilies on a cloudy day. Nothing is more wonderful for photography than the soft light available during an early morning fog or mist. Although bright yellows, melons, and orange daylilies may benefit from some sunlight, as a general rule never shoot pinks, lavenders, or purples in direct sunlight, since its yellow wave length will tend to render these colors as salmons, pinkish lavenders, or muddy purples….

“With some digital cameras, the cool tones may be so strong that lavenders and purples will be overly enhanced, particularly in early morning light, and some further reduction of the blue in the purple may be necessary…. Shooting photos in mid-afternoon is always a problem, because the colors of the daylilies, particularly the darker ones, may have undergone a muddying effect that the camera will detect….

“When there’s bright sunlight and no clouds, people may seek to shade blooms with their bodies or to use some such object as an umbrella to provide requisite shade. Neither is generally successful. The shadow, even that from a white umbrella, tends to gray or dull the bloom…. Though some may want their prints to ‘pop off the page,’ be sure they don’t pop inaccurately.”

Hello!

While I have quite a few books about botany, gardening, plants, and flowers (and access to many more), it’s uncommon to encounter photography advice in any of those books, even those focused on a single flower family like lilies or daylilies. The excerpt above from The Illustrated Guide to Daylilies is then a welcome exception, as the author diverges from his writing about all-other-things daylily to spend some time explaining how to accurately capture daylily colors and how to manage lighting when photographing these flowers.

As the author notes, and as I’ve often written about here before, cloudy days provide some of the best lighting for outdoor flower photography: harsh shadows produced by intense sunlight are reduced, and color is not over-saturated since less of it is reflected back into the camera’s sensor. But, of course, you can’t necessarily wait around for cloudy days (we had hardly any in June, so I wouldn’t have taken many pictures if I’d waited for clouds), so it’s good to experiment with different lighting conditions and see what you can do to optimize them. Finding ways to balance sunny-day lighting by composing for backlighting, side-lighting, or sun filtered through trees can work well — and that’s what I tried to do with these photos of pink daylilies from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens.

Here’s an example where the scene has a lot of backlighting. From the camera’s perspective, this was the “correct” exposure, as it attempted to balance lighting between the foreground and background. I use my camera in manual mode, but I think this is similar to what the camera would render if automatic exposure settings were used since there’s so much bright light behind the flower. I could have zoomed in and filled the frame with the flower and avoided this dull rendering, but I liked the sense of summer sun splashing around behind the flower and wanted to keep the scene composed that way.

Because Lightroom lets you select subjects and backgrounds and adjust their settings independently, it’s possible to do a lot more with this image than simply increase its exposure or brightness (which would apply to the whole scene, including the backlighting). Here’s what I see in Lightroom, where the first screenshot shows the subject selected (in fluorescent green), and the second shows the background selected.

With these selections completed, I can switch between the foreground and background, and work on all their exposure and color settings as if each part was an individual photo — with the goal, ultimately, of recreating the scene as I saw it (and not how the camera interpreted it), with a bright pink daylily in the foreground and soft swatches of green and yellow from the grass and shrubs in the background.

Here’s where we end out… can you feel the summer breeze?

Here are the two images side-by-side; select either image if you would like to view them full-screen for comparison.

Most of the photos in this post got a similar treatment; it’s my normal workflow at this point to adjust foreground and background elements separately to help me recreate what I saw. This capability also means that I can manage well with a wide variety of lighting conditions — so I don’t have to stay home and wait for clouds to come in!

Thanks for reading and taking a look!