New Zealand: up and down at Tunnel Beach

Three years ago today we visited Tunnel Beach about five miles southwest of Dunedin.

I took the first picture from the edge of a cliff looking down at some bull kelp in the surf below.
Doesn’t it remind you of the long, flowing hair in a Botticelli painting?

The next two photographs, taken from the beach, show natural designs on the walls of a cul-de-sac.

And here’s the view looking back up at the adjacent sculpted rocks:

Living in Texas, I can’t help but be reminded of a pair of outsized cowboy boots.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve

Two years ago on this date we spent several hours in the temperate rainforest
of the Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve near Guerneville, California.

Intermittent rain accompanied us there. During rainless periods the lace lichen,
Ramalina menziesii, still suggested its own sort of precipitation from the trees.

Even when fresh, bits of lace lichen end up on the forest floor, there to perish.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: green is the color of Riccarton Bush

A year ago today we visited Riccarton Bush in Christchurch.

As you can see, the place is heavily shaded. The green of and on the dense vegetation predominates.

If you’d like to read more about the history of this area, click the image of the plaque and it will enlarge; then click again and you should be able to make out the words.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

Six years

Six years ago today I uploaded the first post of now almost 2300 in Portraits of Wildflowers. You might say that tentative entry was like the little fern shown above getting a foothold in the vertical strata along the trail we trekked to New Zealand’s Franz Josef Glacier on February 20th this year.

Those strata, which hadn’t always gotten turned 90°, proved so visually appealing that I took many photographs of them. Below is another one. The pink in both cases is from small lichens. Call these formations waterfalls in stone and you’ll have come up with an apt metaphor.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: still more things than the glacier at the glacier

When we visited the Franz Josef Glacier on February 20th, my attention leapt not only to the glacier and nearby waterfalls, but to the many rocks in the area. In particular, lots of rocks were coated to varying degrees with a fine red-orange lichen, shown above, that made the stone surface it was on seem painted.

In many cases, as you see below, mosses vied with the reddish lichens for territory on the rocks.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

Forest green

Oh, look at the lush green of the forest—the ferns, the mosses, the trees—at Muir Woods National Monument as I experienced it on October 29th. This place is just 12 miles north of San Francisco in a metropolitan area of millions and is therefore one of the most popular nature sites in the country. Unfortunately we ended up having to visit on a Saturday, when the multiple parking lots had filled up early and parked cars lined the country road for half a mile. None of that need trouble you in this tranquil picture.

© 2016 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

New Zealand: A colorful seep

Driving along SH 6 north of Punakaiki on the west side of New Zealand’s South Island on February 17th, I caught some flashes of bright colors off to my right on the highway embankment, so I pulled over at the first safe spot and walked back to investigate. I found that the place I’d seen was a seep whose slow but steady oozing of water had nourished the lush growth you see here. If you can take your eyes off the rich reds and oranges, note also the slender green leaves on some young flax plants, Phormium tenax, known in Māori as harakeke.

UPDATE: Thanks to Peter Beveridge, who writes: “Looks to me like the relatively common liverwort Syzygiella colorata.  You know the usual reluctance to be definite about these things in the absence of a close look but this seems highly likely.” In searching online, I see that the species has also been known as Jamesoniella colorata.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman