Antelope-horns milkweed flowers

Click for greater clarity.

Eventually the buds of Asclepias asperula, known as antelope-horns milkweed, open into the five-pronged flowers you saw a few posts back. Now here’s an even closer view, with no distractions, to show you the intricate structure of those flowers. You’ll recall that the flowers form a sort of dome, but if we flattened out the perspective I think the resulting pattern* would lend itself to wallpaper. I’m talking about the good old-fashioned kind of wallpaper that people put on the walls of rooms rather than on the monitors of computers, though the pattern would work for the newer type of wallpaper as well.

For those of you who are interested in photography as a craft, points 1 and 9 in About My Techniques are relevant to this photograph.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman

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* I sometimes use the WordPress tag patterns, but I’ve found that almost everything on WordPress that gets categorized that way has to do with fabrics, weaving, clothing, sewing, etc. How about some equal time for patterns in nature and abstract patterns?

Antelope-horns milkweed buds

Click for greater clarity.

Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, or so they say. And in the movie Sunset Blvd. the character of Norma Desmond says: “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” So now the Mr. Schwartzman who readily brought you a close-up of a blackfoot daisy in the last post also brings you this close view of the buds of antelope-horns, Asclepias asperula, which appeared with some blackfoot daisies two posts ago. I’ll call your attention to the red star incised on each green and pudgy pentagonal bud; note also the long, stiff, folded leaves that characterize this species.

For those of you who are interested in photography as a craft, points 1 and 2 in About My Techniques are relevant to this photograph.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman