Posts Tagged ‘algae’
North Fork of the San Gabriel River
On November 30th we spent some time on the North Fork of the San Gabriel River near Tejas Camp in Williamson County. For lack of rain the river had gone down a lot, revealing bedrock that’s more often hidden. The dropping water level left some algae draped over a rock, which the sun did a good job of spotlighting:
© 2020 Steven Schwartzman
Cascade Ponds
“These algae looked like… mosaic art to me!” is how one online reviewer described what he saw when looking down from a little bridge into the water of Cascade Ponds outside Banff, Alberta, in the fall of 2017. When we visited on September 2nd of that year I confirmed the mosaic look and also the presence of what another online writer called “neon green algae.” That green life had lots of abstract photographic appeal for me, though whether it was a sign of ecological health or distress, I don’t know.
What I do know is that Cascade Ponds was a good place to photograph the adjacent Cascade Mountain. Notice how water in fact cascades down the mountain in a chain of waterfalls.
© 2018 Steven Schwartzman
More than waves
In addition to waves shooting up from rocks along the Atlantic coast in the Schoodic section of Acadia National Park on June 8th, I paid attention to several shallow pools of water that had collected in depressions on top of the nearby rocks. The picture above, intentionally taken at a somewhat skewed angle, gives you an overview of how little pools form in the rocks. Below, seen more closely in other pools, you get a sense of the intriguing colors and textures sometimes found within them.
© 2018 Steven Schwartzman
New Zealand: Neptune’s necklace
Something else that intrigued me at Cable Bay on February 13th and at other places on other dates was a type of brown algae known by the imaginative names Neptune’s necklace, Neptune’s pearls, sea grapes, and bubbleweed (Hormosira banksii).
© 2017 Steven Schwartzman
Like a long mound of orange spaghetti
Driving south along California’s scenic Highway 1 on November 3rd last year, we stopped at Carmel River State Beach, where I found this drying mound of seaweed that made me think of orange spaghetti. You’d have seen it that way too, wouldn’t you?
I take this to be a kelp, possibly Macrocystis pyrifera. Click the icon below to zoom in for some yummy details.
Trentepohlia
Do you remember the Monterey cypress with the unusually long branch I saw at Point Lobos, California, on November 3rd? A few minutes later I came to a grove of those Cupressus macrocarpa trees with branches heavily covered by a green alga designated Trentepohlia aurea v. polycarpa (according to one online source). Don’t be fooled by the orange color: in Trentepohlia “large quantities of carotenoid pigments… mask the green of the chlorophyll.”
This intricate view strikes me as a good way to inaugurate 2017, which is a prime number. The last prime year was 2011, when this blog began, and the next one won’t come along until 2027.
If you’re interested in photography as a craft, you’ll find that points 15 (not prime) and 19 (prime) in About My Techniques are relevant to today’s photograph.
© 2017 Steven Schwartzman
Different greens
Here are some different shades of green I saw in Great Hills Park on February 23. The first picture is a close-up of mosses on a horizontal tree branch.
In the second picture, notice how the rattan vines, Berchemia scandens, held the upper part of a broken tree in place and kept it from falling over.
In the third image, look at all those maidenhair ferns, Adiantum capillus-veneris, made happy by the rain.
And finally here are some branches of an Ashe juniper, Juniperus ashei, with pale green lichen on them.
© 2016 Steven Schwartzman