Posted by wilde on July 26th, 2008 — Posted in Vegetable
The Downy Rattlesnake Plantain started opening its blooms this week. Each of these orchids has a few dozen quarter-inch long blooms at the top of a fuzzy stem with about a third of the blooms open.
You can see why this orchid is called ‘downy’ as all parts of it seem to be fuzzy with soft, downy hairs.
Here’s a similar photo taken without a flash. Details of the open flowers are more visible.
Three sepals are the same white color as the petals, except for a tinge of green at the sepals’ edge. The two upper petals are merged into a hood. The lower petal is enlarged into the typical cupped lip of an orchid.
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Posted by wilde on July 25th, 2008 — Posted in Vegetable
The Passion Flower blossom that opened the day before yesterday has now closed up, so the blooms are only open for a day or two.
The bloom on the left is the finished one and that on the right is just now opening.
Notice the spikes at the ends of the sepals. Sepals are white on the inside, which make the passion flower appear to have 10 white petals.
I didn’t capture the action when the passion flower opened its blossom today, but it opened fast enough to shake the whole vine.
Five elongated, yellow-orange stamens contrast with the dark purple and light blue fringe. The brown-tipped purple stalks are the stigma and style female reproductive parts of the flower.
The stigma are sticky tips of the stalks, or stigma, which are tubes that lead the sperm to the ovary – the bulbous, creamy white structure – where the fruit will eventually develop.
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