Blackfoot daisy from below
Click for greater clarity.
Here, from April of 2010, is a closer look at a blackfoot daisy, Melampodium leucanthum. The markings on the underside of the rays that you could barely discern last time are clear in this close view from below.
For those of you who are interested in photography as a craft, points 1, 3, and 5 in About My Techniques are relevant to this photograph.
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
This is just stunning
the daisy is my favourite flower…
kateshrewsday
May 19, 2012 at 1:16 pm
There are so many kinds of daisies, too, so you could look at a different one every day for months. A local one (in Texas, that is) that I’ve featured in these pages several times is the four-nerve daisy, which has appeared budding, fresh and even fading.
Steve Schwartzman
May 19, 2012 at 1:29 pm
Exuberant
Thank you so much!
kateshrewsday
May 19, 2012 at 1:31 pm
Amazingly beautiful shot Steve…love the angle from below!
H2O by Joanna
May 19, 2012 at 1:40 pm
You know what they say: there are two sides to every story. For me there are at least two sides to every flower.
Steve Schwartzman
May 19, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Wow, love this picture. Simple and and at the same time unusual.
bentehaarstad
May 19, 2012 at 1:59 pm
Some people think I’m unusual, too!
Steve Schwartzman
May 19, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Those markings look like tiny little blood vessels. Very pretty from this angle too!
Cathy
May 19, 2012 at 2:00 pm
They do look like blood vessels. What function they serve in a flower, I’m afraid I don’t know.
Steve Schwartzman
May 19, 2012 at 2:14 pm
I like how you show different views of flowers…this is stunning!!!
dhphotosite
May 19, 2012 at 2:53 pm
Yes, you’re right that I try to show different aspects, different stages.
Steve Schwartzman
May 19, 2012 at 5:37 pm
This is so beautiful! Love perspectives like this.
Inga
May 19, 2012 at 4:44 pm
It demonstrates how I look up to my subjects.
Steve Schwartzman
May 19, 2012 at 5:37 pm
This is beautiful!!!
laviebohemeart
May 19, 2012 at 9:29 pm
It’s a case of beauty in simplicity.
Steve Schwartzman
May 19, 2012 at 10:29 pm
Oooohhh.. they’re butterfly wings!!!!
Just A Smidgen
May 20, 2012 at 9:00 am
I’ve never thought of that, but now that you say it I can easily see it your way. Happy imagination.
Steve Schwartzman
May 20, 2012 at 10:38 am
This photo is pure happiness. Thank you.
Saint Stay At Home
May 20, 2012 at 5:04 pm
You’re purely welcome. There’s so much to see in nature here — and everywhere else.
Steve Schwartzman
May 20, 2012 at 5:07 pm
Such a beauty! Spent a few minutes looking for the word for the hairs on your flower… Turns out there a quite a few words to describe plant hair.
Care to have a look? http://www.backyardnature.net/hairs.htm Now I must say, that with so many choices you’d have thought that I might have found one to describe your flower’s covering? Yet, strangely, none of them seemed to be what I was looking for. Still, it was an interesting read.
~ Lynda
pixilated2
May 20, 2012 at 11:20 pm
That’s quite a list of hair-related words at the end of the article you pointed us to. Some I’ve encountered in my reading, others not, but it sure helps to know a bit of Latin (or it goes the other way, and you can learn some Latin from all these technical terms). As you point out, it can be hard to classify a given kind of plant hair. I think it would be helpful to have a real specimen and a microscope—plus a Latin dictionary.
Steve Schwartzman
May 21, 2012 at 6:24 am
Quelle jolie vue! Chez nous, Daisy s’appelle Marguerite. Elles vont bientôt fleurir ici, quand le soleil et la température voudront bien se joindre à nous.
lancoliebleue
May 21, 2012 at 6:55 am
Quelle coincidence: avant de lire ton commentaire j’avais pensé au mot français marguerite. Ça m’a fait penser aussi au commencement d’un poème de Gerard Manley Hopkins: “Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving?”
Que le soleil et la température veuillent bien se joindre à vous bientôt.
Steve Schwartzman
May 21, 2012 at 7:07 am
Hopkin’s poem is a favorite, one which led me to write of the “re-leafing” of the golden grove.
shoreacres
May 21, 2012 at 3:36 pm
Readers, the link leads to Linda’s heartfelt and poetic prose, into which she weaves the lines of Hopkins’s poem. Her thoughtful post is well worth reading: it’s yours for the clicking.
Steve Schwartzman
May 21, 2012 at 9:49 pm
From this angle, the sweet daisy looks less like a flower and more like a confection. It also does a terrific job of being a model for that expression about being “fresh as a daisy”. It looks crisp and clean, like fresh linens.
shoreacres
May 21, 2012 at 3:38 pm
I’m pleased that you see the abstraction in this. As for “fresh as a daisy,” for all the hundreds of times I’ve photographed native daisies of various kinds, somehow, strangely, I’ve never connected them to that familiar expression.
Steve Schwartzman
May 21, 2012 at 5:59 pm
[...] corner of a panorama showing a resurgent wildflower meadow. In that photograph the butterfly was on a blackfoot daisy, but the picture coincidentally gave pride of place to antelope-horns [...]
Same visitor, different view, additional colors and patterns « Portraits of Wildflowers
May 22, 2012 at 12:50 pm