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

Category: photography

Wild (or Woodland) Tulips

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From “Wild Tulips” in Tulip (Botanical) by Celia Fisher:

“Once upon a time — as all the best stories begin — tulips grew unnamed and various in the valleys and slopes between distant mountain ranges. Their bulbs enabled them to endure ice-cold winters and fierce summer heat, in contrast to which the gentle sunshine and showers of springtime made them burst into flower. Their variations of colour, shape, size and other more intimate features must have been prompted by adaptations to their environment but seem also to be full of joie de vivre….

“[Tulipa sylvestris] was first recorded growing in Italy in the sixteenth century but only around cultivated land, especially vineyards, and even as far east as Tabriz. Its discovery in 1927 was described thus: ‘It occurs here mainly if not exclusively in orchards. It is sold in the streets in April towards the end of the month’ — both facts providing valuable clues that T. sylvestris was, many centuries ago, gathered in the wild for its appeal as a spring flower and spread happily (being stoloniferous) until it became a weed of cultivation….

“In Europe, naturalized colonies occur in France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, England, Sweden and even Norway, where it can be found near seaports. Since ships once carried soil as ballast, which at the end of the voyage might be dumped near the port, this is another clue to the journey of T. sylvestris. Possibly the English colonies were brought by the Romans with their vines, but if so they remained unrecorded for a long while. T. sylvestris is a tulip of golden charm, with a spicy scent and oriental pointed petals that curve back at the tips even in bud. The flower droops a little on its tall, swaying stem and the backs of the petals are darkly shadowed with grey/green. They open a little untidily and sometimes the petals number up to eight…”

From “Up at a Villa — Down in the City” by Robert Browning in Browning: Poetry and Prose, selected by Simon Nowell-Smith:

Is it better in May, I ask you? you’ve summer all at once;
In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns!
‘Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three
     fingers well,
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red
     bell,
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick
     and sell….

From “A Children’s Poem” by Manocher Movlai in Flame of the Uncharted Heart: Essential Poetry, selected by Jon Schreiber:

Look at the wild tulips.
The sun has filled them up with Life.
Now they’ve opened,
offering the resin of the Sun
to the honey bees,
who don’t mind if the little birds enjoy
a taste of heaven themselves….

Hello!

Here we have clusters and closeups of Tulipa sylvestris — tiny tulips commonly called Wild Tulips or Woodland Tulips, and sometimes historically referred to as Florentine Tulips after their abundant, natural occurrence in antique Italy. I don’t see too many of these around my ‘hood — mostly at Oakland Cemetery, where I photographed these — so I like to think of them as exotic and unusual, but perhaps I should not. They are striking, though, especially when photographed to show off some of the red and orange colors on the unopened flowers, or from a slightly upward angle to capture how those colors contrast with the yellow of the rest of the petals from below.

As is apparent from the photographs, I took these on one of those excellent overcast days where sunlight is softened as it peers through the clouds. Until I started working on the photos, however, I hadn’t expected many of them to look like they’re glowing. That glow is very evident on the first five; then varies in intensity on some of the others but is visible wherever yellow/orange colors of the backs of petals contrast with darker colors, shades of purple and red. Most of the photos came out of the camera quite flat, like this…

… which I expected because of the overcast lighting conditions. At import, Lightroom is showing me the image as the camera captured it, based on the settings I chose — and yet the camera’s sensor has captured so much additional color and detail that this is like an image just waiting to be elevated.

With minor adjustments to basic settings in Lightroom (reducing highlights and whites, adding some contrast, and a little bit of texture), the details and contrasting colors that are actually present in the flower petals are revealed. I then create the “glow” effect by altering the relationships between the colors (but not changing their hues) so that the orange and yellow colors contrast more starkly with the purple and red colors.

The result…

… is similar to the shimmering effect created by red letters on a blue background or vice versa (see Chromostereopsis) — and is actually a perceptual illusion. While I often try to photograph flowers with side-lighting and backlighting to let sunlight add glow to some of the flower petals — this is quite effective with irises, for example, when lighting conditions favor it and the flowers are translucent — this is the first time I’ve tried to do it with flowers like these. They’re not translucent (despite their small size, the flower’s petals are quite thick), so light doesn’t really pass through them, but creating greater contrast between the available colors seems to yield similar results. Of course, I do like my photo manipulations and certainly like playing in the “illusion space” — so I think I’ll try repeating this approach with other flower photos.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Red and Rembrandt Tulips

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From “Rembrandt and Florists Tulips” in Tulips: An Illustrated Identifier and Guide to Cultivation by Stanley Killingback: 

“Many will suggest that [Rembrandt and Florists] tulips… are now obsolete but they are still popular with a good number of people who would disagree with that view.

“All these tulips are ‘broken’ or ‘rectified’, which means that the flower’s anthocyanin pigment, which had been diffused over the whole petal, gathers in certain restricted areas. Stripes and splashes are the result, with the ground between white or yellow and no longer modified by the anthocyanin. This breaking we now know is caused by TBV (tulip breaking virus) and is transmitted from one plant to another mostly by aphis but possibly by other forms of life.

“These broken tulips became known as florists tulips in the seventeenth century, when the effects were first noticed. They were divided into six classes. Roses had white grounds with pink to crimson scarlet markings. Bijbloemens had white grounds with purple markings and Bizarres had yellow grounds with red and brown markings. Each colour group had two classes, feathered and flamed. The markings of a feathered flower are confined to the edges of the petal. The edges should be continuous and finely pencilled but the depth may vary considerably with the variety….

“These broken tulips of various forms had their own classification until 1969, when they were all amalgamated into one section and given the name of Rembrandt tulips.”

From “Tulips” by Margaret Belle Houston in The Lyric South: An Anthology of Recent Poetry from the South (1928), edited by Addison Hibbard:

Tulips in the window,
     For all the world to see!
Red and yellow tulips
     Draw the heart of me!

I would believe in any folk,
     Whatever their neighbors said,
With tulips in their window,
     And a little garden bed.

I would marry any man,
     And serve him with a will,
Who, living all alone, should plant
     Tulips on his sill.

Hello!

I missed photographing the tulips at Oakland Cemetery last year. I think they came and went betwixt several rounds of severe thunderstorms we had in March and April, because I only found bare stems with disembodied petals scattered on the ground when I went looking for them. They grow in a flat, open area of the property not far from daffodils I posted previously, so I suppose they weren’t well-protected from wind and rain and didn’t much appreciate getting storm-beaten.

So I was glad to find some standing tall this year, and pulled together these very many photographs of two or three different variants, all likely Tulipa gesneriana, or Garden Tulips. The tulips in the first twelve photos below are fully red, and they’re followed by a mix of bicolor red and yellow. I think that the bicolors may be two different kinds, since some of the flower petals are rounded but others come to a point or exhibit a bit of ruffling at the edges. For the last seven photos, we get a look at the asymmetrically colored tulip’s innards, which show how the alternating red and yellow colors emerge in random patterns like those that appear to have been painted on the outside.

Part of the quotation at the top of this post — “Bizarres had yellow grounds with red and brown markings. Each colour group had two classes, feathered and flamed.” — seems to describe them, and as you might guess, the idea that bicolor red and yellow tulips could be called “Bizarres” was very appealing. “Bizarres” in this context, though, probably refers more to a historical name for tulips like this, and the name was commonly used to segregate similar varieties during Tulip Mania of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

“Rembrandt” was another term to describe them, and the name — after the painter Rembrandt and his use of rich, contrasting colors — was also once a tulip division. Treating the name as a tulip division still persists but is no longer technically correct; while referring to tulips with colors like the red and yellow ones below as “Rembrandt Tulips” or “Rembrandt-type Tulips” is still common. Click here if you would like to see some Internet variations that sport similar patterns in different colors identified as Rembrandts; or here if you like to see them by yet another common name — Flame Tulips — which certainly fits their appearance.

Thanks for taking a look!

Dogwood Study (2 of 2)

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From “Dogwood Characteristics” in Dogwood: The Genus Cornus  by Paul Cappiello and Don Shadow:

“Of course, the flowers are what make the dogwood. Just the mere mention of the name dogwood conjures up images of sprightly spring days of crystal blue skies, fresh morning breezes, and the clear proud glow of a flowering dogwood in bloom.

“While this does a bit of injustice to the entire clan (by far, most dogwoods don’t have flowers that most casual observers would call dogwood flowers), for many this is the image of spring. In the eastern and central United States, the Pacific Northwest, throughout much of temperate Asia and parts of Europe, there is probably no better recognized, loved, or planted small flowering tree than Cornus florida, the flowering dogwood. There are dogwood festivals, subdivisions, shopping centers, and more. In Kentucky, we even celebrate annually dogwood winter, that late spring cold snap at dogwood bloom time that reminds us all that the tomato plants we just set out can still experience a rude reminder of Mother Nature’s occasional mean-spirited jokes. No, there are few who would argue the flowering dogwood’s position as top dog among the spring-flowering trees.

“Yet, as many learn in grade school, or at least in an introductory plant materials class, the flowers of Cornus florida aren’t white at all. Of course, the true flowers are yellow to yellow-green and not more than 0.25 inch (6 mm) across. The show is apparent in what are called involucral bracts that subtend the boss of 20 to 30 true flowers. These are the outer protective structures evident in the winter bud that sits at the end of most dormant branches. Still, a sure way to win a quick beer at a spring neighborhood barbeque is to bet the host on the color of his or her dogwood’s flowers. It’s a winner every time.”

From “Waking in Connecticut” in Fierce Day: New Poems by Rose Styron:

Amazing morning —
every tree and bush
bursting greenly —

weeping cherry
in the Japanese garden,
lilac fountains skyward
now over the pond, now low

at lawn’s rim,
white dogwood stretching
beyond the old stone walls….

Hello!

This is the second of two posts with photos of the flowering dogwood, Cornus florida, from Oakland Cemetery. The first post — where I describe my approach to taking and processing these photos, and explain some of the dogwood’s unique design features — is Dogwood Study (1 of 2).

Thanks for taking a look!

Dogwood Study (1 of 2)

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From “Names” in Self-Portrait with Dogwood by Christopher Merrill:

“Cornus means ‘of the horn’ and is related to the Latin words for tusk, the horns of the crescent moon, the wing of an army, a musical instrument played by Roman soldiers, the end of a book or scroll, power, strength, might. Elizabeth Bishop’s poem ‘Florida‘ begins, ‘The state with the prettiest name.’ The same holds for the botanical name of the dogwood native to the eastern United States, Cornus florida, which may be translated as ‘flowering horn.’

“It is surely one of the prettiest trees in forests and backyards from Maine to Florida and westward to Illinois — a small nesting tree, rarely more than forty feet tall, with opposite or adjacent pairs of oval leaves and clusters of what botanists call perfect inconspicuous yellow flowers, surrounded by four white or pink petal-like leaves known as bracts. Its bark, ridged and broken, is said to resemble the hide of an alligator…. White-tailed deer and rabbits feed on its twigs and leaves, and in the fall its scarlet fruit, which is mildly poisonous to humans, provides food for squirrels, foxes, beavers, skunks, and black bears, as well as thirty-six species of birds, including bobwhites, cardinals, cedar waxwings, robins, mockingbirds, wild turkeys, and woodpeckers.

“It is an understory tree, which grows in the shade of the forest canopy….”

From “A Cold Spring” in The Complete Poems, 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop:

A cold spring:
the violet was flawed on the lawn.
For two weeks or more the trees hesitated;
the little leaves waited,
carefully indicating their characteristics.
Finally a grave green dust
settled over your big and aimless hills.
One day, in a chill white blast of sunshine,
on the side of one a calf was born….

The next day
was much warmer.
Greenish-white dogwood infiltrated the wood,
each petal burned, apparently, by a cigarette-butt;
and the blurred redbud stood
beside it, motionless, but almost more
like movement than any placeable color.
Four deer practised leaping over your fences.
The infant oak-leaves swung through the sober oak.
Song-sparrows were wound up for the summer,
and in the maple the complementary cardinal
cracked a whip, and the sleeper awoke,
stretching miles of green limbs from the south….

Hello!

For this post and the next one, we have a study of an old dogwood tree that I’ve previously photographed (see, for example,Dogwoods with White Blooms (1 of 2) and Dogwoods with White Blooms (2 of 2) from 2023) at Oakland Cemetery.

On most of those earlier trips, I tended to focus on closeups of small clusters of the dogwood’s flowers, since — especially on sunny days — it can be challenging to get a satisfactory photograph of larger sections of the tree. The combination of bright sunlight and the tree’s massive quantity of individual white flowers would make it difficult to find a focal point for the composition that wasn’t just overpowered with white light. The overcast day I took this batch of photos on, however, gave me a chance to examine the tree from different perspectives and zoom levels and capture it more as a whole tree than individual branches and flowers. Not having to contend with too much backlighting in particular meant it was possible to observe and capture details that would have otherwise gotten lost in the light.

Let’s talk about the first four photos below, as they show off some of a dogwood tree’s unique characteristics. This is most likely Cornus florida — a dogwood common to many regions, and quite prevalent in and native to the U.S. Southeast. What is conventionally referred to as this dogwood’s flower or bloom is a more complex structure, consisting in part of tiny, conical flowers at the center surrounded by white (or sometimes pink or red) petal-like bracts — whose job is to attract pollinators to visit the less visible yellow-green flowers.

Dogwood branches often extend wider than the tree’s height, so the tree in bloom occupies a much larger horizontal space than other trees with trunks of similar height. That the branches reach or stretch as far as they do creates a striking visual effect, as each row of branches tends to alternate with other rows in slightly overlapping layers. When photographed at wider angles, the tree gives the impression that it’s too wide for its height, especially since the main trunk (or typical split trunk, in this case) leans toward the reaching branches at about a 30-degree angle. You might think it’s going to fall over; but it’s really just trying to get your attention with this somewhat contradictory design.

The dogwood’s branching pattern is often described as a fishbone or herringbone effect, something that becomes more evident as you study (or photograph) the tree. And the effect is especially noticeable during the tree’s blooming season, as the branches extend in opposing directions over each other. Once the leaves appear, much of the space occupied by the blooms will get filled in, and the contrast between white bracts and the surrounding landscape is less apparent. That the branches are gnarly adds to the effect: they don’t proceed straight out from the tree, but instead appear to twist in multiple directions as their terraces of flowers seek out the light. On those layered, threaded branches, the blooms float like a blizzard of snowflakes in even the slightest breeze. The effect carries through to the photographs (I hope), and I should add just for fun that I had to take several breaks while working on the photos: the intense contrast between the white petals and the rest of the photo caused me a bit of snow blindness as they seemed to light up my desk and the corner of my office.

This tree — accurately described as an understory tree in the quotation at the top of this post — grows in the shade of several taller oaks, maples, and a magnolia tree nearby, but its branches reach with great determination in the opposite direction, toward the sun rising over the cemetery’s gardens. The third photo below shows that directionality: on cloudless mornings, the sun would be seen rising over the buildings in the background.

I tried to cajole the tree into revealing its age; but no matter how many times I questioned the trunk, it refused to answer. In dogwood-years, though, it’s probably in its middle or late middle age — six to eight decades as evidenced by its height (thirty to forty feet), the diameter of and split in the trunk, and the wide sweep of its branches. Architectural structures surrounding it are even older than that, but it’s not likely that the dogwood has been there since the late nineteenth century and was probably planted in the mid-twentieth. Nevertheless, it does, at this point, fit so well with the aesthetic qualities of what’s around it that it’s easy to think of it as a tree as ancient as the property where it flourishes, protected by the trees around it and well-maintained by the garden’s caretakers.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Hello, Clematis! (2 of 2)

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From “Clambering for Attention” in The Story of Flowers and How They Changed the Way We Live by Noel Kingsbury:

“Clematis are now one of the most important groups of garden plants, with dwarf ones, ideal for small gardens, balconies and even window boxes, selling in their millions. The plants have, however, come a long way. The very modestly flowering European species appear to have been grown in gardens from the sixteenth century onwards, but it was the opening up of China and Japan in the nineteenth century that led to the large-flowered hybrids we know today. Far Eastern growers had for centuries had plants with showy flowers and, crucially, a tendency to flower on side shoots. This ability to flower low down makes them very useful as garden plants, as is shown by the habit of growing them on obelisks made from wooden trellis.

“A breakthrough was made in 1858 by the English nurseryman George Jackman, who crossed an existing hybrid with the European C. viticella and the East Asian C. lanuginosa. The resulting showy, vigorous plant proved a huge success. Meanwhile, C. montana had arrived from the Himalayas, introduced by the wife of the governor general of British India. It too was a great success, clambering up the sides of British country houses, along garden walls and even to the tops of quite substantial trees, smothering everything with pink flowers for a few weeks in early summer….

“From the great botanic gardens of St Petersburg came C. tangutica in the late nineteenth century, a botanical outcome of the ‘great game’, when British and Russian explorers were both investigating, and seeking to dominate, Central Asia. It and similar species are vigorous, and their strangely thick yellow petals are borne, usefully, in late summer.”

From “The Wood-Pile” by Robert Frost in Collected Poems of Robert Frost:

Out walking in the frozen swamp one grey day,
I paused and said, ‘I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther — and we shall see.’
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home….

And then there was a pile of wood…
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled-and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year’s snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year’s cutting,
Or even last year’s or the year’s before.
The wood was grey and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken.

Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle….

Hello!

This is the second of two posts featuring photos of resurgent Clematis from my garden. The first post — with my backyard history of these plants — is Hello, Clematis! (1 of 2).

As with the previous post, here we start with some of the buds and vines posing in the morning sun. These are followed by images of full flowers — those with prominent purple or pink stripes through their petals, possibly the Clematis lanuginosa variant described in the quotation above. Toward the end, there are closeups of the Clematis flower’s complex central structure.

Thanks for taking a look!