Tag: flower photography

Titan Arum Flower

When I posted today about the Rafflesia flower, MZ & Cho from Chateaux Des Fleurs commented that the flower reminded them of the Titan Arum flower. I looked it up and found that even though the flowers look very different from each other they definitely have things in common, e.g. they come from Indonesia, they are very big and they have an unpleasant odor.

Again, I found some Titan Arum royalty free images on Getty Images. The photo below is from that site. Click on the Getty Images link to see a lot more photos, some free, some not.

Getty Images caption: This very large flower bloomed in January 2018 in Cairns, Queensland, Australia. However the flower is not indigenous to Australia, actually being native to Sumatra island in Indonesia. The bloom attracts people not only because of its large size but also because it really stinks. The unpleasant odor resembles a rotting flesh and is known as the corpse flower. Its scientific name is Amorphophallus titanum, also known as titan arum. The flower stalk can reach over 3 metres in height. These days the plant is seen around the world, particularly in public gardens in tropical cities.

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I also found many Titan Arum photos on Wikimedia Commons. The next three photos are from there but if you click on the link you will find many more.

I think it is very interesting that like the Rafflesia plant, the Titan Alum plant is called a corpse plant, because of its rotting flesh odor.

I have enjoyed learning about these two plants today.

Rafflesia Flower

This week, I read an article on cnn.com that said a scientist had found a nearly four feet in diameter rafflesia flower. It was found in West Sumatran, Indonesia. I didn’t have access to a free photo of that particular flower but found a royalty-free photo of a similar flower on Getty Images.

Blooming rafflesia in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia.

I also found photos of smaller rafflesia flowers on Wikimedia Commons. The two photos below come from that source.

The article went on to say that the plant doesn’t have any roots or leaves; it is parasitic, feeding off of another plant, drinking its water and taking its nutrients. It releases a foul odor that resembles the smell of rotting meat. To read the full article click here.

Catching Up

I’ve been too busy to write on my blog even though I’ve had numerous ideas. This will be the first of my “catching up” posts!

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My yard used to be covered with grass. I removed the grass from my front yard years ago. Over the last few years I’ve removed it from the back yard as well.

Several years ago, I noticed some white flowers emerging from the ground next to a planter box. I had no idea what it was but knew I had never planted it.

I don’t know when the flowers came up this year; I think it was during August. On September 4th they looked like this:

This time I used a plant identification app to find out what kind of flowers they were. They are called ivy-leaved cyclamen, sowbread, baby cyclamen and cyclamen hederifolium.

I continued to watch and photograph the plant. When I took a photo on October 5 there was much more foliage.

And on October 23 the foliage remained the same, but there were only a couple of flowers.

As I look at this close up now, I’m noticing the spirals. I wonder what they are. Could there be more flowers coming? It doesn’t seem likely but I will find out!

I have enjoyed watching this plant evolve as it goes through its life cycle. Since I don’t know exactly when the flowers were “born”, I will pay even more attention to it next year.

Flower of the Day

FOTD: September 4, 2019

I realize I have several flowers that I refer to as my favorite flower. When I reflected on that fact today, it occurred to me that my favorite flower changes with the season. In the spring, my favorite flowers are the blooms on my magnolia tree; in summer, I am intrigued by the echinacea flowers; and at this time of the year, my favorite flowers are the ones on my aster shrub. I think I have taken more beautiful shots of those flowers than any other.

This is the photo I just took.

I love it.

Flower of the day

My 2019 Garden

I never planted a garden this year, because I put my time and energy into working in the Greenbelt, but I had a garden just the same. Even though they aren’t supposed to be perennial flowers, the pansies continue to come up in the spring and every year there more of them. And I have other beautiful perennials.

I didn’t take photos of the pansies this year, but I did take some of the others. I hope to take some microscopic photos of the echinacea flowers soon.

There have been more bees in my garden than there have been for years; bumblebees, mason bees, honey bees. They have particularly loved the echinacea, lavender, and marjoram plants.

I don’t seem to have a copy of the bee balm flower I took earlier in the summer but I took one this week of a frequent visitor to that plant. I wish the photos were clearer but the hummingbird moves faster than I do.

I planted a few lettuce plants in the front yard in early spring but nothing else. Nature apparently decided that wasn’t enough. Five cherry tomato plants came up in the front yard and potato plants came up in my back yard raised beds. Both were seeded by last year’s plants.

I have really appreciated the work that Ramana and I did in the back yard in the spring and early summer. It is so beautiful.

So there is beauty around me, both in my yard and in the Greenbelt, even though I didn’t plant a garden this year. As I wrote this post, I remembered Pete Seeger’s song Turn, Turn, Turn. I will end the post with a 1966 video of Pete Seeger and Judy Collins singing that song.