The Globe Artichoke (Cynara cardunculus) is a perennial thistle. If the buds or “globes” aren’t harvested, six-inch bluish-purple thistle-like flowers will form. This is an abstract closeup shot of two unopened buds and one flowering bud. Bees are especially drawn to the flowers.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
I love the way the bokeh of the grasses makes the background looks so painterly. Serendipity!
© Cindy Dyer. All right reserved.
Meadowlark Botanical Gardens’ “Experimental Meadow” was full of Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, Spicebush Swallowtails (click here to see the incredible caterpillar that this particular butterfly morphs from), American Painted Lady Butterflies, Silver-spotted Skippers, and Cabbage White Butterflies today.
Mary Ellen—no sighting of Monarchs at this garden today, unfortunately. I have seen a few in my garden this summer. In 1999 Mary Ellen founded Happy Tonics, Inc., a nonprofit 501(c)(3) environmental education organization and public charity. Happy Tonics also created the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary in Shell Lake, Wisconsin, a few years ago. I met Mary Ellen when I purchased milkweed seed from her eBay store and we have collaborated on design and environmental projects ever since!
GREAT PHOTO TIP! Here’s a butterfly photography trick I learned from Mary Ellen a few years ago. Wait until the butterfly has it proboscis inserted into a flower and it becomes completely distracted by the task at hand—then move in closer, staying as still as possible.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Photographed at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in Vienna, Virginia; hybridized by Moldovan, registered/introduced in 1975
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
I think this is a type of strawflower, hybrid unknown. I photographed this in the South African-themed garden at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens this afternoon.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
My wish was granted! (Sorry, no ID yet on the insect—anyone hazard to guess?)
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
I photographed this little gem in the South African-themed garden at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in Vienna, Virginia. I believe it is a type of African Daisy, but I don’t know the name of the hybrid. I’m not sure what the purple flowers in the background are either, but they certainly look like a type of Clematis. Love the combination of orange and purple—exceedingly garish, yet perfectly lovely. The weather was stellar today and great for photography, even if only for an hour out of my busy design workday!
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other. — Chinese proverb
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved. Love flowers? Visit my botanical gallery here.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Earlier this month, I posted a photo of a Pineapple Lily in pre-bloom stage here. Today the plants were just starting to bloom at Green Spring Gardens and I was able to get a plethora of images. In fact, I spent about 20 minutes photographing just one bed of these plants! They were full of very tiny ants and an occasional wasp. More photos to come.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Overcast and very pleasant day, perfect for a quick (and fruitful) lunchtime shoot at Green Spring Gardens. This is an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on a ‘Zowie’ Zinnia. I wish the edge of the right wing was a tad sharper, but I had to move quickly to even get this shot! Stay tuned, more images to come.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Sorry, it’s late, I’m tired, and I just couldn’t think of a better title for this photo (see the tiny ant on the upper left bud?). As soon as I typed it, I thought of Aunt Bea from Mayberry R.F.D. I’m hitting the hay. Goodnight, Opie.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
These are images from my very brief photo outing at Green Spring Gardens this morning. When I arrived, the sun was out and the sky was just a wee bit cloudy. Just 25 minutes after I got there, down came the rain. I’m lucky I got these few images before the weather changed.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
This is a type of Oriental Lily, although I don’t remember which hybrid it is. There are 22 of these beauties in full bloom in a huge container on my back patio. What a sight!
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
I’ve been tending to this same Passion Flower plant since 2006—so this makes the fifth year I’ve been able to over-winter it in my studio office! As I was photographing this flower, I heard a creaking, croaking sound. Could there be a new frog taking up residence in our teeny, tiny pond again? I couldn’t find him, but I certainly could hear him! I’m crossing my fingers in hopes that I can get a shot of this new garden inhabitant.
Also blooming in the garden today: 22 bright pink and green downward facing lilies (they’re stunning en masse!), three huge white Casa Blanca Lilies, large clusters of Purple Coneflowers, two groups of Shasta Daisies, and one beautiful deep purple and white Dahlia. I’ll get some photographs of those this afternoon.
Passionate about Passion Flowers? Check out the links below to see more images shot in my garden over the past few years.
http://cindydyer.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/its-about-time/
http://cindydyer.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/backyard-blooms/
http://cindydyer.wordpress.com/2008/06/21/meanwhile-in-the-garden/
http://cindydyer.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/lady-margaret/
For more information on passion flowers:
Passiflora Online is a comprehensive website with growing tips, FAQs, plant ID, hybrid and species images, pollinators, and much more.
Plants in Motion has videos of a passion flower in bloom and also short clips of bees visiting the flowers.
Tradewinds Fruit has a great database of passion flower blossoms. Click on the “related species” section on the left of the site to see a wide variety of passion flower plants.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Unlike the Dogbane Beetle, who let me photograph him for almost 15 minutes, I got just one shot of this Cucumber Beetle before he was off to another sunflower. I wish I would have had time to add some ring flash light to add extra sharpness to his body, but the composition draws me in, so I’m giving myself a brownie point for that!
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
I stalked this beetle at the McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Area this morning for at least 20 minutes—it wasn’t hard; he moved up and down the same sunflower leaf the entire time. I was just mesmerized by his rainbow coloring! In researching what type of beetle it was, I came across this site here, which describes this insect’s beautiful coloring:
The dogbane leaf beetle has a special type of color that shines and changes as the insect changes position or we change position looking at it. This changing color is called iridescence. The beetles’ iridescence is produced by special body structures and light. The surface of the body parts of this beetle is made up of stacks of tiny, slanting plates, under which is a pigment (substance that produces color). Some light rays reflect from the surface of the plates, and other light rays reflect from the pigment underneath. At different angles, the light reflects at different speeds, causing interference and resulting in our seeing different colors that shine.
Adult beetles feed on Dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum)—hence its name—and milkweed. I’m glad I didn’t touch the little guy—apparently they avoid some predators by giving off a foul-smelling secretion when they are touched!
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
I rolled out of bed at 6:30 a.m. this morning (the things I do for you people!) to get ready to go pick up Jeff, my friend and fellow photog, then drive up to the McKee-Beshers sunflower field on River Road in Maryland. The weather was perfect and the sky was cornflower blue —a perfect backdrop to the cheery sunflowers! We didn’t really need to bring the big ladder—this year’s crop was substantially shorter than last year, so you could see over the field pretty easy without needing more elevation. We both got overhead shots on the ladder, so I’m glad we brought it anyway. There was a throng of other photographers, standing on step stools or squatting in the fields. I counted at least 20 just as we entered the area.
Although I wasn’t able to capture any images of them, the fields were full of Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, Monarch butterflies and goldfinches (would love to have gotten a shot of a yellow goldfinch on a yellow sunflower against that blue, blue sky!) Sigh…
Still, I was a little trigger happy—after culling out the out-of-focus and bad exposure shots, I have 265 images to peruse (and these were all shot in just about an hour)…so stay tuned for more! You can see images from my first visit to McKee-Beshers in my July 22, 2008 posting here.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Some of you may have noticed that my photographic style is very graphic and sometimes minimalist—clean lines, stark composition, judicious use of light, pops of color, selective depth of field, and employing varying degrees of bokeh. Well, capturing a “plant portrait” of Queen Anne’s Lace (which I have avoided until now, believe it or not), isn’t easy—and it’s a hard flower to fit into my more graphic style. It’s a very delicate flower with hundreds of little flowering brachts spread over a wide, curving surface—making it hard to control the depth of field across the entire flower. I hung in there yesterday and experimented with it—resulting in a shot that I rather like—and that still suits my photographic bent!
Queen Anne’s Lace is sometimes called Wild Carrot—in fact, the carrots we eat were once cultivated from this plant. Lacy, flat-topped clusters bloom from May through October. It is a biennial plant, meaning it lives for just two years. Although many people consider it an invasive weed, many insects benefit from this wildflower—caterpillars of the Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly (right) eat the leaves, bees and other insects are drawn to the nectar, and other insects feed on the aphids that inhabit the flowers.
Photos © Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
I believe this Pineapple Lily is the Eucomis comosa variety (not yet in bloom, but beautiful even now!). The flower colors are white and it will bloom late this summer through early fall. I have grown Eucomis autumnalis ‘White Dwarf’ Pinneapple Lilies in my garden for years. They work great in pots, too, although they’re not winter hardy.
Excerpted from the Rainy Side Gardens website:
A South African native, the name Eucomis comes from the Greek word eukomos, meaning lovely-haired, in reference to a crown of bracts on the flower. Although it is easy to start from seed, it can take two to five years before the plant reaches blooming size. After the blossoms fade, the purple seed capsules carry on the show.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Ornamental Onion (Allium senescens), photographed at Green Spring Gardens this morning
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
Last year I posted a series of botanical collages based on various colors. I’m adding recent photos to those collages, beginning with pink—in every shade imaginable! I had so many new shots of pink flowers that I had to divide the collage into two separate postings. Click here to read my posting last winter entitled, “This post is brought to you by the color pink.” Enjoy!
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
I’ve added more than 50 new images to my Botanical Portfolio on zenfolio.com. Many of the photos were shot in my own front and back yard townhouse gardens, while others were shot in gardens across the U.S. and Canada. In every city I visit, I make an effort to visit a botanical garden or nature preserve to capture new images. I recently added the Mitchell Park Conservatory (The Domes) and Boerner Botanical Garden in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to my roster of gardens I’ve visited. Both were worth the visit, but Mitchell Park really needs to do something about the exterior entrance of their conservatory. When we drove up, we noticed weeds growing up through cracked sidewalks and the shallow ponds on either side of the door were drained with weeds growing in them. We almost didn’t stop to get out because the place really looked abandoned. The inside, however, is a completely different story—beautiful, lush, and well-maintained. We read in their brochure that they recently renovated the place and added LED lights to the domes so they can be viewed at night in the Milwaukee skyline. I’m sure it’s beautiful lighted at night (never mind that it’s not actually open at night unless there’s an event), but they really should have set aside some of those funds to fill the ponds with water, plop in a few inexpensive water lilies and 49 cent WalMart goldfish, and do some weeding and cement repair. (Psssst! Hey, Mitchell—I’m available for consultation and implementation!)
http://cindydyer.zenfolio.com/p270076135
And to see why I love my local Green Spring Gardens so much, visit my Green Spring Garden photography folio and see the plethora of photographs I’ve shot exclusively there over the past four years.
http://cindydyer.zenfolio.com/p787446313
We’ve had two days of strangely cool weather here in Northern Virginia—which were preceded by a long row of 90+ degree days! It actually feels like spring today (and it’s July—unheard of!), so I got out for an hour to shoot at my favorite local garden (and donate 40+ gardening books to their library while there—don’t feel sorry for me, though, the loss hardly made a dent in my stash—I’m almost embarrassed to say).
I’ll concisely identify the plants below later, but I think that #1 is an allium—possibly Allium stellatum x nutans or something similiar (located in the lovely rock garden at the visitor center circle driveway), #2 is on the tip of my tongue (please stand by), #3 is a Ptilotus exaltatus ‘Joey’ or Pink Pussy Tail (also in the rock garden and a plant that I’ve not seen before today), #4 is one of my (and the bees) favorites—Purple Coneflower (Echinacea), and #5 is a type of Clematis. I’ll be diligent and get back to you with exact identification on the questionable ones.
The imaginative gardeners at Green Spring Gardens have added a new feature to the gardens near the visitor’s center—a wonderful summer-sky-blue stucco-textured wall atop a brick raised bed. They’ve mounted several “living sculpture” framed boxes filled with various succulents on the wall and the raised bed contains other desert-loving plants. It looks very southwest inspired and adds a great pop of color to that area of the garden. I’ll get photos of the blue wall feature on my next jaunt. The garden was buzzing with both bees and people—artists from a local art club set up to paint, joggers and walkers were out in full force, kids on tricycles circled round, and a group of kids on a field trip flooded the garden. Enjoy this most unusual weather while you can, folks—it won’t last long!
ID UPDATE: I’m pretty confident that the top photo is a Nodding Onion (Allium cernuum). These plants prefer sun to part sun, thrive in average well-drained soil, and are drought tolerant. They self-sow aggressively and need deadheading to prevent them from doing so. Deer resistant and hummingbird friendly! I had so much fun photographing these plants that I’m going to try to add a few to my own garden next year.
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
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