Sex in the woods

[vaneramos]

One miracle about the Canon PowerShot is the opportunity to see places the eye cannot see. The moveable viewer enables the camera to descend to ground level, or over heads, and still find the desired focal point. Speed and aperture controls render the invisible visible.

The Asarum canadense flower is not the most artistic photo I took yesterday, but most interesting. These innocuous blooms lie on the ground, half-covered with leaf litter, brownish corolla enclosing a mysterious dark hole. But opening the camera lens, it reveals sex organs (thanks, apel).

I had gone seeking my favourite indigenous flowering shrub, Dirca palustris, which unfortunately was past. Damn global warming until next spring. But other woodland ephemerals were evident in their muted glory. I was going to say "modest glory," however there's nothing demure about a Sanguinaria bud oozing raindrops.

As for the mystery photo, finch_bear wins by identifying the leaf of Erythronium americanus, trout-lily, dogtooth violet. that_dang_otter gave the best guess by a Westerner: a member of the lily family, at least. What detail the macro offers! I thought it resembled an amphibian skin. missprune wins "most imaginative" for suggesting, "part of a beetle."

Its flowers were clenched tight against drizzle.

Comments

[bohemianvegan.livejournal.com]

that's neat. I wonder if those only grow in Canada. I never saw them in New England.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

All three of these wildflowers are fairly widespread in Eastern North America, but you would have to look in rich woods at this time of year to see them. The flower of wild ginger is also very innocuous, so you could easily pass by without noticing it.

[art-thirst.livejournal.com]

Van, those are really really nice... that sap looks really strange though.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Are you talking about the droplets on the white bloodroot flower? I think that's actually collected rainwater. It's strange how it clings to the petals, but of course this is a macro photo, so the droplets look heavier than they are.

[ironbark.livejournal.com]

It also allows you to point the lens at that piece of passing eye-candy while pretending to look the other way.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm looking forward to trying that with this new camera. Not much opportunity so far.