Archive for October 25th, 2013
When is a rain-lily black? — Take 2
Click for greater clarity.
Another way a rain-lily can be black—and you might say a more legitimate one than as a shadow—is through its seeds. Here you see a couple of rain-lily seeds that hadn’t yet fallen out of their little compartment, even though the two adjacent compartments in the capsule had already shed their cargo. What the tiny white flecks on the dark seeds were, I don’t know, maybe just dust. Also notice the faint spider silk in several places.
The location is once again the triangle of land where Perry Lane runs into Mopac, but this picture dates from November 14th of 2011. (I had a version of this post ready to appear shortly afterwards, but somehow I kept bumping it. Now seemed like the right time to let it go out into the world.)
With this photograph you’ve seen the last stage in the life of a rain-lily. Other views in these pages have included:
A rain-lily flower beginning to open;
A pink tip of a rain-lily tepal;
A rain-lily turned red by the setting sun;
A dense colony of rain-lilies;
The outside of a rain-lily seed capsule.
If you were to say that I like rain-lilies, you wouldn’t be wrong.
© 2013 Steven Schwartzman
When is a rain-lily black?
When is a rain-lily black? When it’s a shadow.
I took this picture of Cooperia drummondii casting its shadow on the pad of a prickly pear cactus along Ridge Oak Dr. at Perry Ln. on September 25th.
© 2013 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 