Portraits of Wildflowers

Perspectives on Nature Photography

Take home a stance

with 17 comments

 

I’ll grant you the title of this post may seem a bit strange. That’s because “Take home a stance” is an approximate way to pronounce the scientific name of today’s subject, Tecoma stans. One of the shrub’s common names causes no trouble: yellow bells. The other common name causes no trouble, either, if you know that esperanza is Spanish for hope, and what color is more hopeful than yellow?

This member of the legume family produces pods whose walls are on the thin side and decay rather easily. When I went to photograph one in that condition I noticed a tiny snail on it that I estimate was about a quarter of an inch across (6mm).

 

  

I took both pictures alongside our house on September 10th.

 

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I recently learned about the website called Freespoke. It’s a search engine that has the motto “See Clearly. Search Clearly.” If you go to Freespoke’s home page, beneath the search box you’ll also see links to three treatments of many recent news items: one from a centrist organization, one from a leftist organization, and one from a rightist organization. In addition, there are some links to stories that the mainstream media generally haven’t covered. For example, when I checked Freespoke yesterday I found a link to a story about 77 newspapers in one chain canceling the popular 33-year-old comic strip “Dilbert” because its writer, Scott Adams, has begun to satirize “woke” culture in offices.

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

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Written by Steve Schwartzman

September 23, 2022 at 4:27 AM

17 Responses

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  1. I will check out Freespoke. Thanks for the tip, Steve!

    Peter Klopp

    September 23, 2022 at 9:23 AM

  2. Clever title to grab attention! And thank you for the link!

    Littlesundog

    September 23, 2022 at 10:23 AM

  3. Cute little shelled creature.

    Steve Gingold

    September 23, 2022 at 2:32 PM

  4. Or, it could be pronounced as ‘Tacoma stans’ — Tacoma being the city, and ‘stans’ being the newly coined word for overzealous or obsessive fans. It usually is used to describe the behavior of people who follow celebrities, but I certainly could stan these yellow bells.

    There was a large plant in front of a business I pass nearly every day that took quite a hit from the Big Freeze. Eventually, it was cut down to nothing more than a cluster of substantial trunks about a foot high. It just sat there for a few months, and then started to grow. Now, it’s at least six feet high with a good circumference and hundreds of bright yellow blooms.

    shoreacres

    September 23, 2022 at 6:04 PM

    • I’d thought about doing something with Tacoma. It happens to be where I was born but my family left when I was six months old and I’ve visited the place just once as an adult. This is the first I’ve heard of stan as an overzealous or obsessive fan. Though it’s not in most dictionaries, Merriam-Webster includes it and gives this etymology: “from Stan, name of such a fan in the song ‘Stan’ (2000) by the American rap artist Eminem (Marshall Bruce Mathers III).”

      Do you know what kind of tree it is that revived and has hundreds of bright yellow blossoms on it?

      Steve Schwartzman

      September 23, 2022 at 6:57 PM

      • Oh — my turn to not communicate my full thought. The plant is the very same yellow bells you’ve shown here, and it’s a show-stopper: beautiful and tough.

        shoreacres

        September 23, 2022 at 7:02 PM

  5. I love the flower and the snail! We don’t see many snails here, mainly huge slugs.

    My favorite Dilbert cartoon was “The Numbing”.

    Lavinia Ross

    September 24, 2022 at 12:20 PM

    • You may have noticed from posts here over the years that small snails are quite common in central Texas, though normally I find them out in nature rather than in our yard.

      Not being a “Dilbert” reader myself, I had to look up the cartoon you mentioned:

      https://dilbert.com/strip/2003-02-16

      Steve Schwartzman

      September 24, 2022 at 12:59 PM

  6. Very striking image of the flowers, with beautiful lighting.

    Ann Mackay

    September 24, 2022 at 12:21 PM

    • As I’ve done in many other pictures you’ve seen here, I got in a position where the flowers were between me and the sun so that the light could go through the flowers on its way to the camera. Backlighting often works wonders.

      Steve Schwartzman

      September 24, 2022 at 1:01 PM

  7. Love the snail image! It would make a good B&W too.

    denisebushphoto

    September 27, 2022 at 4:37 PM


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