I have been fascinated by Echinacea flowers since I was introduced to them last year. I know that bees and butterflies love them too. In the last two weeks I have planted three Echinacea plants in or near my front yard vegetable garden.

The bees are already visiting the Echinacea. Next year, I hope the butterflies will come as well. I was so excited when I saw one yellow butterfly in my garden earlier this year. That was the first one I’d seen in years.

This afternoon, I decided to look at two of the orange flowers under the microscope. Most of the photos below are of one of the smaller, and younger, flowers. It was similar to the flower that you can see at the bottom center of the photograph at the top of this post.

center

same part of the flower but further from center

petal-top

petal underneath

flower upside down

I think the microscopic photographs are like works of art. This is my favorite of the shots I took today.

The next group of photos show what the flower looked like when I cut the center part of it in half. I found the white photo particularly fascinating. (Click on it if you want to see a clearer view.) The intricacies of nature never cease to amaze me.

This last group of photos shows three views of one of the bigger and older Echinacea flowers.

Every time I look at my Echinacea flowers, I think of the Echinacea field at Amma’s Center in Chicago (M.A. Center Chicago) that I saw earlier this summer.  I will end this post with an aerial video that was taken of that field last year.