Waterfall Wednesday #3

You’ll forgive me if I’ve let the definition of waterfall spill over into unaccustomed semantic territory. After recent rain, on June 4th along Bull Creek there was indeed water falling from a cliff. Down it came in many narrow streams, some over moss-covered rocks, others over maidenhair ferns, Adiantum capillus-veneris. It seems botanists have done a bit of semantic boundary-pushing, too: the species name for these maidenhair ferns means ‘hair of Venus,’ yet from what I’ve read of Roman mythology, Venus was no modest maiden.

In “Thoughts in a Garden” English poet Andrew Marvell wrote:

No white nor red was ever seen
So amorous as this lovely green.

Today’s pictures don’t show a garden, yet the greens they deliver to your eyes are a marvel.
(Related English words that also trace back to Latin are miracle, mirage, mirror, and admire.)

© 2021 Steven Schwartzman

Back to my roots on the Bojo River

Okay, so I don’t have family roots along the Bojo River in Aloguinsan on the island of Cebu in the Philippines, but I do have pictures of some wonderfully intricate tree roots from our December 17th boat tour of the river.

Did you notice the snail under the frontmost limb in the third picture?
Click below for more detail.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Nova Scotia’s answer to New Zealand’s pōhutukawa trees

New Zealand’s massive pōhutukawa trees are famous for managing to cling to and hang out over cliffs where you’d think gravity wouldn’t let them do that. On June 6th in Hall’s Harbour, Nova Scotia, I found some evergreen trees precariously perched on a cliff along the Bay of Fundy. I took pictures of them from several angles, including the one above looking mostly straight up from the shore beneath the largest of the trees. Notice the curious curve of the small tree at the bottom of the photograph. Below, from a horizontal point of view, you get a closer look at the huge tuber-like base hanging off the cliff.

© 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

Intricate roots of a fallen tree

Glacier National Park, Montana; August 31.

New Zealand: Kahikatea

The little reserve in central Christchurch known as Riccarton Bush is home to some trees known botanically as Dacrycarpus dacrydioides, in Māori as kahikatea, and in English as white pine. Unlike the many imported species of pine covering so much of New Zealand, this tree is native. In fact, as you can see from the plaque at the end of this post, the kahikatea is the tallest native tree in the country.

The roots of some of the venerable kahikatea trees I saw on March 1st were impressive. Judging from what I’ve found on the Internet, I haven’t been alone in photographing these very ones:

Here’s an informational plaque that stands in Riccarton Bush:

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

Roots of a large bald cypress tree along Onion Creek in southeast Austin on September 20

Click for larger size and greater detail.

Bald cypress = Taxodium distichum.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman