Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Meadow Flowers

Our meadow is decorated with sparkles of yellow these days, as the Buttercups bloom.  Along with them a few other meadow flowers are in bloom now, though it will be more colourful later on.  I'm surprised that so many of these open field flowers are white or yellow.

The Buttercups are a brilliant yellow, but they have so little contrast between petals and stamens, that they're hard to photograph.  I solved that here by taking a back-lit close-up instead of photographing it from the front.

This is the other current yellow flower, the Goatsbeard.  It's one of those magic flowers that seems to have a personality.  Just a 'weed', but it opens up in the morning sun and turns to follow the sun, later closing its petals to wait for tomorrow, a behaviour known as 'heliotropism'.  

The Dandelions were the other yellow flower.  Plentiful when they're blooming, but they're almost all transformed into tiny seeds waiting for a puff of wind now.

We must have had a million of these, in the lawn, the meadow, and even the garden.  Do you recognize it?  A little larger than life-size, this is a Wild Strawberry bloom.  They're so low in the grass that the lawnmower goes right over them.

And these are one of the tiny patches of miniature Daisies in our lawn, only a few inches high, with small blossoms, I've been mowing around these to encourage them to grow and spread seeds.  They seem to be lasting a long time too.

Yesterday, when I doggedly went out photography raindrops in the rain (!), I saw only one bedraggled normal size Daisy in bloom.  Now, after today's sunshine and warmth, there are several.  I'm always intrigued by the fractal spiral pattern in the centre.

And finally, the beautiful tiny Blue-eyed Grass, not a grass at all, but a flower that has grass-like leaves, and is actually a member of the Iris family, buried beneath taller plants in the meadow.

A beautiful sunny day here that actually got warm, and a week of such days to come.  Looking forward to it.  Hope your weather is as good.


19 comments:

  1. So much pretty yellow... and then that lovely little iris! Charming!

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  2. No words to tell about the beauty of the flowers! The weed also looks beautiful:)

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  3. Your photography just gets better and better. And no, since you asked, the weather is dreadful :-)

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  4. Hello, love all the pretty flowers. Daisies are one of my favorites. Happy Thursday, enjoy your day!

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  5. It was a perfect day for taking those wonderful pictures and sharing.

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  6. Thank you for sharing your photography abilities. I love your flower close-ups.

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  7. One of my favourite posts! Love the close-ups of the natural wonders.

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  8. I bet we have some of those wild flowers here but I don't live near a wild area to see them. The wild strawberries I had forgotten about until you mentioned it. We had them in our timber and I was always fascinated with them as a kid. We grew regular kinds of strawberries so the small wild one was different to see. I like seeing your collections of wilds. I do have the dandy kind.

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  9. Your pictures are wonderful. Buttercups may be pretty, but they sure are difficult to get out of my garden! :-)

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  10. wild flowers - aren't they amazing!! it's also amazing how pretty dandelions look in pictures, i don't love seeing them in my lawn!!!

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  11. Here's a question for the botanists -- why does it seem that the vast majority of flowers of open country are yellow or have large yellow portions?

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  12. Lovely to see all of these flowers ...

    All the best Jan

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  13. Lovely buttercups! I saw a blue eyed grass bloom on the Oregon coast the other day.

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  14. Glad it is finally warming up for you. I like all the wild meadow flowers too. We have a bagillion of them---everywhere. I guess the cows like them because a lot of fields full of the Buttercups are mowed and baled for hay. Horses don't seem to like them. The Blue eyed grass is one of my favorites---I actually have them in my garden.
    MB

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  15. I hear that buttercup and dandelion have been removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary because children these days have no idea what they are. Very sad. And odd because buttercups may be more of a country flower, but dandelions grow everywhere. Including my garden.

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  16. Backlit flower petals always make for some dramatic photos. Good stuff.

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