Spring bouquet
A bunch of different flowers I’ve seen recently:
Dandelion center
Foamflower
Iris cristata
Wood poppy
Bluets and beetle
Nature Diary
Notes from the field, essays, and observations.
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Who’d’ve thought the stamens of a dandelion would look so much like the horns of a ram?
What a nice bouquet to start the day 🙂
Thanks, Melissa!
Beautifully captured!
Thanks, Amy!
The bluets-with-beetle made me smile. The insects I find inside or on flowers alway are a special treat — lagniappe, if you will. I’ve even begun to associate certain insects with certain plant families (milkweed bugs are only the most obvious), and certain insect families are becoming more familiar. I’ve learned to look for the antennae of flower beetles, for example: those little critters can make short work of a flower!
It still surprises me that there’s a yellow poppy. I just met a yellow poppy cultivar on another blog. I didn’t realize there were natives. The Lady Bird Johnson site says this one isn’t native to Texas, even in the northeast, and otherwise is “Somewhat uncommon, with spotty distribution.” That explains that!
If you photograph flowers, you get to see many browsing or feeding insects, of course. They don’t always make a more interesting image than a flower portrait, but I thought the beetle was a fun one.
For insect diversity, try observing insects on goldenrod in the late summer and early fall: flower beetles and other beetles, tree crickets, halictid bees, other bees, predatory ambush bugs, and of course butterflies of different species.
And there are insects that feed on single species, such as dogbane beetle on dogbane.
Wood poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum) is a favorite of mine in the wild and in massed plantings like the one in the post, from Garden on the Woods. I also love Iris cristata, vibrant and low to the ground.
Beautiful 🙂
Thanks, Joshi! 🙂
Very nice clichés and flowers ! 🙂
Thanks, these were fun compositions to try.