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

Tag: macro photography

White Asters / Shasta Daisies (1 of 2)

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From “Spirals: The Math in Snails and Sunflowers” in Patterns in Nature: Why the Natural World Looks the Way It Does by Philip Ball:

“Of all the patterns and forms of nature, the spiral has probably held the greatest appeal for mystics and dreamers. It is revered by adherents of ‘sacred geometry,’ who consider the patterns and forms of nature to embody spiritual truths of the cosmos. Spirals are found in ancient and indigenous art ranging from the carvings on the Bronze Age stones of Newgrange in Ireland to the paintings of Australian Aborigines.

“Nothing better exemplifies the apparent mystery and profundity of the logarithmic spiral than its manifestation on the heads of flowers such as sunflowers and daisies. The seeds of a sunflower head are arrayed in rows that trace out not just a single logarithmic spiral but two entire sets of them, rotating in opposite directions. The pattern that results has profound mathematical beauty: crystalline precision combined with organic dynamism, creating shapes that seem almost to shift as you stare at them….

“If you count the numbers of spirals in each set, you find that they only take certain values…. For smaller sunflowers there might be 21 spirals in one direction, 34 in the other. For very large heads, there might be as many as 144 and 233. But only these pairs of numbers — never, say, 22 and 35. Why are some of these numbers favored over others?

“No one is yet sure why the sunflower seeds adopt this arithmetical arrangement. One longstanding idea is that it enables the florets or seeds or leaves to pack most efficiently as they bud from the tip of the growing stem…. This is simply a geometric problem: if you want to arrange objects in an array spiraling out from a central source, what should be the angle between one object and the next? It turns out that the most efficient packing, which gives the double-spiral Fibonacci pattern of phyllotaxis, is one for which this angle is about 137.5 degrees — known as the Golden Angle.”

Hello!

This is the first of two posts with photographs of white asters — most likely, Shasta Daisies (Leucanthemum × superbum) — that I recently took at Oakland Cemetery’s gardens. Many of these Shastas appeared in large clumps — spanning fifteen to twenty feet horizontally — and (as you can see from the first three photos) were quite content to grow in the shade of an old Oak Tree, while edging their way toward sunnier positions on one of the garden’s sidewalks.

As is true for most of the flowers in the Aster family Asteraceae, the central disc of these daisies actually consists of many tiny, individual flowers — which gave rise to “Composite” or “Compositae” as an earlier name for Asters. While working on some of the close-up photos in this series, like this one…

… I became a bit obsessed with how the orange-yellow disc looks, where (below in a zoomier view), you can see how the center of the center is packed with flowers but the outer edges are not.

In my imagination (such as it is!), I thought maybe some little bees had come around, picked the flowers from the outer rings, and gave them happily to their other bee friends. Hey, why not? But then it occurred to me that they probably wouldn’t have managed such nearly perfect circles as they picked the flowers, so that might not be an accurate observation.

I wanted to learn more about why the central discs looked like this, and after a few abortive attempts, hit on a question I could ask one of my AI Assistants:

When I look at photographs of a daisy’s disc florets, it appears that some of them are empty, especially around the outer edge of their circle. Why do they look like that?

The response I got included several possibilities — including “removal” by insects (haha!) and wind or rain damage — but the most plausible explanation was that the disc fills with flowers from the center outward, and those in the outer rings had not yet matured. Armed with this knowledge, I went back a few days later and checked some of the same flowers again to see if the discs had filled in — but it was too late and the white Shastas were already beyond their flowering stage. Perhaps next fall, I’ll try that again.

That the central disc fills with flowers from the center to the outer edge was equally fascinating to me, and digging into that I learned a little more about what happens. The tiny florets actually grow in two concentric spirals — with one spiral running clockwise and the other running counterclockwise. Look again at the zoomed-in photo and you can clearly see the spirals. And once you see them, you’ll see them every time you look closely at a flower like this.

This arrangement is not only not random, it runs in a mathematical sequence among the flowers in the Aster family. Starting from the center outward, the number of individual florets follows the Fibonacci Sequence — where each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two numbers: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233. Most of the smaller Asters — like the Shastas in this post — have 34 or 55 individual florets (yes, I counted them!) in the outer ring. Sunflowers — also members of the Aster family — are often used to explain this mathematical sequence in nature, so if the subject interests you, search for terms like “Fibonacci sequence and sunflowers” or phyllotaxis (which encompasses the study of natural shapes, merging botany and math) on YouTube and you’ll find quite a few fun explanations.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Autumn’s Aromatic Asters

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From “Aster oblongifolius” in Armitage’s Native Plants for North American Gardens by Allan M. Armitage:

“The aromatic aster… is loaded with blue-purple daisy-like flowers that persist into late October. When brushed lightly, the blue-green leaves release a fresh, hard-to-describe but pleasant fragrance. This aster grows from rhizomes (as do most asters) and will attain a height of 2-3′ in the wild. Up to a dozen well-branched stems occur on a mature plant, and each holds narrow 1″ long leaves. The flowers are violet to pink to blue, each being about 1″ wide.”

From “Aster oblongifolius” in The Gardener’s Guide to Growing Asters by Paul Picton:

“The flowerheads have 20-30 violet, rarely lavender or pink, rays and yellow disc florets. Pale green leaves are oblong or lanceolate-oblong, to 8 cm (3 in) long, and rough on compact clumps….

“If freedom of flower production over a long season counts for anything A. oblongifolius and its offspring deserve to be much more widely planted by gardeners. The most aromatic parts of the plant are said to be the green-tipped bracts below the rays. The variable species has already provided gardeners with the selection known as ‘Fanny’s Aster’, which is similar but smaller. [Flowerheads] are freely carried over a long period on bushy sprays, with many branches which spread horizontally.”

Hello!

Below are seventeen images of Aromatic Asters that were among the earliest asters to appear this autumn at Oakland Cemetery’s gardens. I photographed these in the first week of October (already a month ago!) while hunting down zinnias. Their tiny violet/purple blooms with orange and yellow centers create one of my favorite color combinations — yellow and purple — that capture the eye’s attention against the dark green background of their stems and leaves. Visually, they make up for their small size by blooming profusely in these rich, highly contrasted colors.

I spent some time puzzling over whether these were Aromatic Asters (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium) or Bushy Asters (Symphyotrichum dumosum), given that Bushy’s flower is so similar in appearance. But the fragrance of these Aromatics was quite distinct — reminiscent, actually, of scented fabric softeners — so I stuck with the idea that I’d gotten the name right, especially since Bushy Asters are scentless. And Aromatic Aster’s unopened blooms emerge in a unique shape — similar to a cone or teardrop shape — that differentiate them from Bushy Asters.

Thanks for taking a look!

Anemone, the Winde-Floure (2 of 2)

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From “Felicitous Flowers for Early Fall” in One Man’s Garden by Henry Mitchell:

“One of the most obliging of all garden plants, and maybe the best perennial for the early fall garden, is the Japanese anemone. Once you have it, you have it. There is no question of replacing it every few years. It spreads moderately but is not invasive, and so far as I have seen it is not bothered by mildew, viruses, or bugs.

“From a tuft of basal leaves it sends up flower stalks three or four feet high, with many buds that open over a period of several weeks. The individual flowers are about the size of silver dollars, either white or rose pink, with conspicuous yellow stamens at the center. There are also semidouble forms. I like the plain single white ones best….

“In the bishop’s garden of Washington Cathedral… I have often admired the white anemone blooming amid fat old clumps of box, one of the happiest associations imaginable. The anemone also looks good in back of late-flowering hostas. But the hostas are too dense for the anemones to compete with, so they should be separated by three feet or so. When they bloom together (their bloom overlaps, though the hostas finish before the anemones), the two kinds of flowers almost touch.”

From “Windflower Leaf” by Carl Sandburg in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg:

This flower is repeated
out of old winds, out of
old times.

The wind repeats these, it
must have these, over and
over again.

New windflowers so fresh,
oh beautiful leaves, here
now again….

The wind keeps, the windflowers
     keep, the leaves last,
The wind young and strong lets
     these last longer than stones.

Hello!

This is the second of two posts with photographs of anemone flowers from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens. The first post is Anemone, the Winde-Floure (1 of 2), where I describe what I learned about the early English term “winde-floure” from John Gerard’s 16th-century book The Herball, or, Generall Historie of Plantes.

Thanks for taking a look!

Anemone, the Winde-Floure (1 of 2)

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From “Of Wind-Flowers” in The Herbal, or General History of Plants by John Gerard and Thomas Johnson:

“The stock or kindred of the Anemones or Wind-flowers, especially in their varieties of colours, are without number, or at the least not sufficiently known unto any one that hath written of plants. For Dodonaeus hath set forth five sorts; Lobel eight; Tabernamontanus ten: myself have in my garden twelve different sorts: and yet I do hear of divers more differing very notably from any of these; which I have briefly touched, though not figured, every new year bringing with it new and strange kinds; and every country his peculiar plants of this sort, which are sent unto us from far countries….

“The first kind of Anemone or Wind-flowers hath small leaves very much snipped or jagged almost like unto Camomile, or Adonis flower: among which riseth up a stalk bare or naked almost unto the top; at which place is set two or three leaves like the other: and at the top of the stalk cometh forth a fair and beautiful flower compact of seven leaves, and sometimes eight, of a violet colour tending to purple. It is impossible to describe the colour in his full perfection, considering the variable mixtures….

“The second kind of Anemone hath leaves like to the precedent, insomuch that it is hard to distinguish the one from the other but by the flowers only: for those of this plant are of a most bright and fair scarlet colour, and as double as the Marigold; and the other not so….

“The [third] great Anemone hath double flowers, usually called the Anemone of Chalcedon (which is a city in Bithynia) and great broad leaves deeply cut in the edges, not unlike to those of the field Crow-Foot, of an overworn green colour: amongst which riseth up a naked bare stalk almost unto the top, where there stand two or three leaves in shape like the others, but lesser; sometimes changed into reddish stripes, confusedly mixed here and there in the said leaves. On the top of the stalk standeth a most gallant flower very double, of a perfect red colour….

“The fourth agreeth with the first kind of Anemone, in roots, leaves, stalks, and shape of flowers, differing in that, that this plant bringeth forth fair single red flowers, and the other of a violet colour….

“The fifth sort of Anemone hath many small jagged leaves like those of Coriander, proceeding from a knobby root resembling the root of Bulbocastanum or Earth Chestnut. The stalk rises up amongst the leaves of two hands high, bearing at the top a single flower, consisting of a pale or border of little purple leaves, sometimes red, and often of a white colour set about a blackish pointel, thrummed over with many small blackish hairs….”

Hello!

I had not previously known that anemone plants were also called “windflowers” — the recent learning of which sent me into a research tizzy about the source of the common name. With a little help from ClaudeAI, I discovered that John Gerard’s book The Herball, or, Generall Historie of Plantes — often retitled as The Herbal, or General History of Plants (or simply Gerard’s Herbal) — contained some of the earliest written references to anemones as windflowers. There are several variations of the book available online, some of which appear to be scans of an original 1700-page 1597 version, where “windflower” was written as “winde-floure” — which I’ve decided is pronounced “windy-flurry” even if it’s not.

Gerard’s Herbal describes eleven kinds of anemone. I quoted through the fifth since that one sounds like the anemone I photographed for this first post — because of their white color and notably for their tiny, sparse leaves that are shaped like coriander leaves, or, as I’ve read elsewhere, parsley leaves. This batch of anemone was growing in the corner shadows of the W.A. Rawson Mausoleum — which you can read more about here, or see some images of here — whose textured gray stone provided a nice background for the white flowers and wispy green stems.

While I often use some magic tricks to extract text from scanned books like Gerard’s Herbal, they didn’t work too well with this version since there are ghostly images bleeding through from other pages. Luckily I found a text version — which I used for the quote up-top, and where the language is partially modernized, though many “haths” and “doths” remain. And from there I found this delightful explanation for the genesis of “windflower” as the plant’s common name….

“Anemone, or Wind-Flower is so called for the flower doth never open itself but when the wind doth blow, as Pliny writeth: whereupon also it is named of divers Herba venti: in English, Wind-Flower.”

… followed by some notes about the plant’s medicinal properties — called “The Virtues” — which include:

“The leaves stamped, and the juice sniffed up into the nose purgeth the head mightily….

“The root champed or chewed procureth spitting, and causeth water and phlegm to run forth out of the mouth.“

Good to know, I guess! 🙂

Across this post and the next one, the plants appear to be Japanese Anemones (Eriocapitella hupehensis) or Snowdrop Anemones (Anemonoides sylvestris) — both of which tend to be fall-blooming anemones in warmer climates, and I normally see them flowering here in the southeast from late summer through late September or early October. I took these photos on October 6th and October 19th — when many of the flowers had already bloomed yet there were plenty still preparing to open.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Sunflowers and Goldenrod (2 of 2)

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From “Sunflower” in History of the World in 100 Plants by Simon Barnes:

“Sunflowers were cultivated in North America long before Columbus crossed the Atlantic. They were grown for food, but no doubt their dramatic appearance was part of the appeal. Certainly it was the look of the plant that prompted Europeans to take sunflowers back across the ocean. Once there sunflowers became a crop plant all over again, useful and humble. But now the plant is ineluctably associated with the cult of genius and the legend of the tormented artist.

“There are seventy species in the genus Helianthus, but it’s the cultivated species Helianthus annus that mostly concerns us here: the one with the flower-head that looks like the sun. It’s not technically a flower but an inflorescence. Each head comprises many individual flowers; each of the outer flowers, which most of us refer to as petals and a botanist calls ray heads, are in fact individual flowers. These outer flowers don’t do sex, being sterile: they are a come-hither signal to insect pollinators, which feed from the many tiny flowers arranged in cunning spirals on the central disc.”

From Onward and Upward in the Garden by Katherine S. White:

“[Goldenrod] is as sturdy and as various as our population; there is delicate dwarf goldenrod, silver goldenrod, tall yellow goldenrod in a multitude of forms and shapes-spikes, plumes, and panicles of native gold….

“Descend into a bog and there, growing wild, is goldenrod; climb a mountain and there, between the crevices of boulders, is goldenrod; follow the shore of the sea and goldenrod gleams along the edge of the sands; drive along our highways from coast to coast in August and September and the fields and ditches are bright with goldenrod….

“The very ubiquity of the flower has given it a bad name as an irritant to hay-fever victims, but I’ve recently read that it is the ragweed and flowering grasses growing alongside goldenrod that are the villains during the late-summer hay-fever season. The goldenrod also has the great advantage… of owing nothing to man, of enriching no seed company, or companies, and of being as wild as our national bird, the eagle.”

From “Journals (1853)” in The Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau by Henry David Thoreau:

“I see the sunflower’s broad disk now in gardens… a true sun among flowers, monarch of August. Do not the flowers of August and September generally resemble suns and stars? — sunflowers and asters and the single flowers of the goldenrod. I once saw one as big as a milk-pan, in which a mouse had its nest.”

Hello!

This is the second of two posts with photos of sunflowers and goldenrod; the first post is Sunflowers and Goldenrod (1 of 2). For the photos in this post, I zoomed in on individual sunflowers or sprays of goldenrod — except for the three photos of a sunflower trio from behind (which are actually my favorites of this series).

As some interesting botanical info-bits:

Both the goldenrod plant and the sunflower plant are members of the Aster family Asteraceae. Sunflowers are in the Helianthus genus; goldenrod is mostly in the genus Solidago, but there are goldenrod varieties in other genuses also.

PlantNet identifies these sunflowers most consistently as Beach Sunflower or Plains Sunflower — sunflowers whose blooms are smaller than their more famous relative, the giant sunflower Helianthus annuus.

I first thought the photos were of either Black-eyed Susans or Brown-eyed Susans (see Black-Eyed and Brown-Eyed Susans (1 of 2); and Black-Eyed and Brown-Eyed Susans (2 of 2)). But while the flowers are similar in appearance (and the blooms about the size of Susan blooms), the form of the unopened buds, tall stems, and distinctly-shaped leaves give these away as sunflowers. And, unlike Susans, these tend to appear not in groups or clumps but — as you can see — as a single stem, or two or three stems. 

Thanks for reading and taking a look!