A spider lily reflecting so much light that the texture of the petals is washed out. Or is that petal singular?
What is a petal? According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the history of the meaning of the term is:
1726, from Mod.L. petalum “petal” (1649), from Gk. petalon “leaf, thin plate,” originally neut. of adj. petalos “outspread, broad, flat,” from PIE base *pet- “to spread out.”
Just an aesthetically pleasing photo. To my eyes, anyway.
I don’t even know what type of plant it is. Location was Albuquerque, NM. Plant height was less than knee level.
I like Spanish Moss. But it’s not. Moss, that is. Technically, it’s an epiphyte. Here’s some of what the Wikipedia entry says about it:
Spanish moss is an epiphyte (a plant that lives upon other plants; from Greek “epi”=upon “phyte”=plant), which absorbs nutrients (especially calcium) and water from the air and rainfall. Spanish moss is colloquially known as “air plant”.
That this plant absorbs water from the air and rainfall explains why it’s found here in Florida. We’ve got air “thick” with humidity and rainfall.
The palm trees in my area are in little danger from the current line-up of tropical storms. If a windstorm does hit during the coming weeks of hurricane high-season — well, you’d think they were just about designed to weather the bad weather. Give one point to natural selection!
If rock could talk it might ‘say,’ Sloooooooooow dowwwwwwwwn. We humans are relative humming-beings compared to the glacial dynamics of stone.
Last night, while listened to a podcast of I-don’t-recall (I subscribe to so many) I heard of a symphony that had been stretched from something like 6 minutes to 16 hours. The snippet sounded like an ever-so-slightly morphing wall of sound.
Rocks? They are heavy history books that say scant little overtly. Yet to those equipped with a bit of information and a healthy dose of imagination . . . Wow!
Here in Central Florida we have a number of woodpecker species. The above is a red-bellied. Nice.
But today wasn’t a nice day for local woodpeckers. We had a big, sickly oak tree taken down. And a tree in that condition is becoming a rarity in our area.
You might say that woodpeckers love sickly trees. Trees that harbor many hidden insects. If the tree hadn’t been leaning toward our house, and within striking distance . . . I likely would have let it be. At least for a few more years.
Even by what we might consider “tidying-up nature,” we leave a footprint on Earth.
With almost sub-sonic, booming thuds, the last of the hundreds-of-pounds section of tree have just come down. Eerie.
Should I wave goodbye to the woodpeckers?
