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

Tag: amaryllis

Amaryllis! Amaryllis! (1 of 3)

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From “In a Quiet Light” in Amaryllis by Starr Ockenga:

“Looking through the lens of a camera at a flower is intoxicating, particularly close up as it morphs from reality into abstraction.…

“Besides being seduced by the plant as a subject for my camera, I also became curious about its history. What does the name amaryllis mean? In what tropical paradise did its ancestors originate? What plant hunters’, botanists’, and breeders’ names are linked to it? Where and how is the bulb propagated today? How is its anatomy defined? What is the plant’s range of color and form? What is the best way to grow it, and under what conditions can it be rejuvenated year after year?”

From “Amaryllis” in The English Flower Garden by William Robinson:

“Amaryllis: Showy bulbous tropical plants, few of the species of which are hardy, though the beautiful Belladonna Lily (A. belladonna) may be grown well in the open air…. It is a noble bulbous plant from the Cape of Good Hope, from 1 feet to 3 feet high, blooming late in summer, the flowers, as large as the white Lily, and of delicate silvery rose in clusters on stout, leafless stems, arising from the large pear-shaped bulbs….

“If planted in autumn, or at any time during the winter, it will be well to protect them from severe weather by half-rotten leaves, coconut fibre, or fern. The plants begin to push forth their new leaves early in spring, and upon the freedom with which they send forth these during summer the bloom in the autumn depends.”

Hello!

This is the first of three posts featuring photos of Amaryllis buds and blooms that I took at Oakland Cemetery’s gardens on two separate visits. The photos in this post are from mid-June, which seems like the optimal blooming time for these large pink and magenta variations, as well as a few white ones that I’ll include in the next post. The second and third posts will also include some I took just yesterday — on one of the few July days when it was not raining or so humid it felt like walking through rainclouds — when I found a batch of late-bloomers showing off deep red and purple flowers, instead of the lighter pink/magenta or white you see here.

Amaryllis is among the many plants often mischaracterized as lilies (see List of plants known as lily for lots of others) — and I mention this only because I too thought they were lilies until a couple of years ago. The appearance of the opened flowers is very lily-like; but mostly I mis-knew them because they’re often referred to as “swamp lilies” — a common name I recognized. And actually it’s crinum — a member of the Amaryllis family — to which “swamp lily” is frequently applied, though it’s quite a challenge to differentiate between amaryllis as an Amaryllis-family variety and crinum when you didn’t plant the plants yourself.

Thanks for taking a look!

White Amaryllis, in Black-and-White

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From On Light and Shadow by Michael Freeman:

“If the subject is unusual, and photographed in a way that isn’t completely obvious, there’s an advantage to flat, axial lighting in that it takes away the modelling clues that we would normally expect, and helps the image to be a little ambiguous. This isn’t so unexpected, because whatever basic image quality you remove from shooting, what remains steps up to be more prominent.

“In the same way, if you remove colour from imagery and shoot in black and white, the qualities of shape, form and line take over more.”

Hello!

For this post, I converted the color images from the previous post (see White Amaryllis) to black and white. While it may seem a little odd to render photos of white flowers this way, it’s interesting, I think, to see how flowers we consider white are actually a blend of white, yellow, and green — especially along those sections of the flower blossoms closest to the leaves and stems.

With that in mind, I included two extra galleries at the end of this post: one showing the color and black-and-white versions side-by-side, and a slideshow (using the “fade” effect that’s available with the WordPress slideshow block) that helps highlight the transition from color to monochrome.

Thanks for taking a look!

White Amaryllis

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From “Inside Amaryllis” in Amaryllis by Starr Ockenga:

“Flowering plants are divided into two classes: monocotyledons and dicotyledons. The amaryllis is classified among the monocotyledons, which typically have seeds with a single cotyledon, or seedleaf. Its foliage is narrow with parallel veins. The flower components come in multiples of three. The sepals, collectively called the calyx, are outermost; the petals, together called the corolla, form the inner circle and are sometimes narrower in form….

“Amaryllis’ sepals and petals, which are together referred to as tepals, come in an enormous range of colors from the most pastel pink to vivid orange, from clear white to velvety red. Many, particularly when kissed by the sun, have an iridescent glow. The ridge in the center of each petal is the keel, shaped like that of a boat. Flowers are horizontal to drooping, trumpet-shaped, or borne in lily-like umbels. Some flowers are open-faced, while others are more closed and irregular, like orchids.”

Hello!

There are lots of new barely-pronounceable words in the quotation at the top of this post! Click the Wikipedia links if you would like to learn more about the botanical terms for the parts of these flowers.

The flowers in this post are likely a variant of crinum, but I liked the sound of the word “amaryllis” better as the title of the post; and since crinum is a member of the Amaryllidaceae family, I’m being approximately accurate. There were very few white flowers left when I took these photos; their petals seem more thin and fragile than all the red, pink, and magenta amaryllis I photographed, and most had been too damaged by rounds of August and September thunderstorms to make suitable pictures. But I did manage to cobble together enough for one post, and will have a second post with black-and-white conversions.

I think I’m a mite envious of all the autumn color photos starting to appear on other people’s sites, as it only this week turned cold enough here in the urban Atlanta jungle for the leaves to start changing their outfits. There’s a little bit of red and yellow popping up, but not enough to get my camera’s attention so far. So I’ll round out the next week or two with some late-blooming southern flowers: the always-reliable lantana and canna lily (not a lily!), and the tiny trumpet-flowers of dipladenia, a shrubby relative of the fast-growing mandevilla. These plants — the first two are perennial versions and the other two are annuals — all last until well after our first cold nights, and often keep blooming into November even if we have a couple of freezies.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!