A change in color
As you heard yesterday and the day before, on the morning of September 18th I stopped where Perry Lane meets Mopac at 45th St. and took many pictures of the descendants of the rain-lily colony that I portrayed on that site in 2011. A rain-lily lasts only a few days, and as it ages its white turns more and more to magenta. Here I was intrigued not only by the changing color but also by the lines and folds in the tepals that formed a roughly flat surface on this side of the flower.
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
Was für ein wunderschönes Foto!!
einfachtilda
September 22, 2012 at 6:48 AM
Rain-lilies are among the most photogenic of wildflowers. I’ve spent hours photographing them over the years but I never get tired of them.
Steve Schwartzman
September 22, 2012 at 7:01 AM
There’s the color that showed in the background of the previous post. This is quite pretty, but I prefer the white. The color does help to accentuate the structure, though, and the texture of the petals certainly is more obvious. A beautiful series!
shoreacres
September 22, 2012 at 7:08 AM
Yes, that’s the color that the previous background showed in a muted way. I’m so fond of rain-lilies that I can’t say I have a favored phase. At the moment I’m especially fond of the previous picture because it’s different from any I recall taking in earlier years. On the other hand, as I mentioned above, the folds in this one particularly intrigued me and I thought about the folds in garments that ancient Greek sculptors played with.
Steve Schwartzman
September 22, 2012 at 7:27 AM
A beautiful photo again. I’m very taken by this flower. It looks as though the colour slowly “bleeds” through tiny veins into the petals.
Cathy
September 22, 2012 at 9:19 AM
Welcome to the company of those taken by this flower. I can imagine the bleeding you’re talking about, like ink into the fibers of a sheet of paper. I don’t know what physical process creates color where white had so recently been. Perhaps a botanist could tell us.
Steve Schwartzman
September 22, 2012 at 9:28 AM
Now I’m seeing them everywhere! On this morning’s run I must have seen four different areas of these lovely little flowers.
Mind Margins/Run Nature
September 22, 2012 at 10:33 AM
It’s a conspiracy: they’re everywhere! I’m glad you got to enjoy them.
Steve Schwartzman
September 22, 2012 at 3:53 PM
Before you explained the color change, I had always imagined the process in reverse. Opening in magenta and fading to white. In my experience with cultivated garden flowers this is generally, but not always, the case. What a lovely finish, and a perfect photograph of the beauty before its demise.
~ Lynda
pixilated2
September 22, 2012 at 11:57 AM
Ah, but wait till next time for a color surprise.
Steve Schwartzman
September 22, 2012 at 3:54 PM
Another superb image Steve!
dhphotosite
September 22, 2012 at 12:18 PM
Hard to fail with such a superb wildflower.
Steve Schwartzman
September 22, 2012 at 3:54 PM
Beautiful! So graceful and lovely.
Caryn Caldwell
September 22, 2012 at 5:53 PM
Thanks. This is truly a graceful and lovely wildflower.
Steve Schwartzman
September 22, 2012 at 7:37 PM
Very pleasing colors!
montucky
September 22, 2012 at 11:44 PM
These
please!
Steve Schwartzman
September 23, 2012 at 1:10 AM
I had left a comment the other day, but I think it didn’t take. Beautiful gradient colorings and texture look. Consider a view upside down, with 75% height reproportioning, and the image looks like a gracefully flowing, full-length, lightweight skirt.
(And here’s the rescued comment from the other day: “Wow! Beautiful! Just had to play with the image on my graphics editor. I copied it to my clipboard, flipped it, and reproportioned tor 75% height. It looks like a very fashionable lightweight skirt with a beautiful gradient in fuschia-ish colors.”)
whilldtkwriter
September 25, 2012 at 7:04 AM
I’m sorry about the delay, Wanda. WordPress somehow put your comments into the spam folder by mistake. It occasionally does that, even with people who have commented numerous times.
As for seeing this as a skirt, I give you leave to use the picture as a design for an actual skirt. Now if you could get the skirt to change colors by itself over several days, that would really be something.
Steve Schwartzman
September 25, 2012 at 8:55 AM