Life cycle study - Lily of the Valley

[Ernst-Ulrich Schafer]

Fun series. I did something the other day in my studio with Lillies of the Valley and will post it in the new BW area.

Ernst

[Wicked Dark]

I'm really glad I shot the last series before I left because now we have this -


I've added a few more to the gallery on smugmug and will add a few more shortly. Right after I shot this latest series, it rained hard and knocked all the drying blossoms off their stems. Glad I didn't get lazy.

Gallery

[QuietOne]

Which is the perfect end to this part of the series. Are you going to continue through seed pods or berries or whatever they produce? Or does this reproduce another way?

[Wicked Dark]

yes I plan to continue until they are buried under snow and ice (they're under the roof overhang and there's often ice as well as snow). They don't do seed pods or whatever, they spread through rhizomes underground, which is basically like a stem and not a root. When the leaves die back they're strangely pretty.

I added a few more shots to the gallery today. One is the same photo, but I couldn't decide if b&w was better than color, so I left them both.

[Wicked Dark]

I hope I'm not boring you guys to death, but here's another stop on the way to full die back, which won't fully take place for months yet.

I noticed when blooming, the flowers do so from the base to the tips, the die back takes the opposite direction.



And I found a stubborn little blossom that couldn't be dislodged even after a heavy rain -



Things will probably be pretty static for a while, but I'll keep an eye on it.

[QuietOne]

No, I'm not bored. I've been watching the cycles of things lately, so this fits right in.

[Bambi]

thanks for sharing this. I have to say that the pictures we have here of flowers are far better then the ones I see on gardening sites.

[Marko]

Not boring at all WD!

"And I found a stubborn little blossom that couldn't be dislodged even after a heavy rain " Lucky for you. That stubborn l'il blossom helps make the shot!

[Wicked Dark]

thanks guys. It's not the norm to keep piling on a thread like this, so I didn't know how people would take it.

[Wicked Dark]

So I learned something new about these flowers - they make fruit.



As they ripen they will turn orangey-red and I'm looking forward to that phase - contrasty color goodness. I hope these last because already I've noticed some have either fallen off or have been eaten. The berry in another picture is gone (you can find it in the gallery though). Like a lot of the others, this was done w/the E-30, the OM 90mm f2 macro, a bag of barley and a block of wood as supports.