Virtually all of the sunflowers we saw were very symmetrical - uniform, bright yellow outer petals; a middle ring of golden stalks or hooks; and a inner disk of tiny geometric whorls changing from gold to green. This one flower broke the pattern with the middle ring incomplete and the inner disk collapsing into a void. The bee didn't care.
An immature sunflower just getting ready to pop into bloom. It is fascinating to see how the bright yellow petals begin to form. At this stage, they look like a plant that could suck something in and trap it.
A field of sunflowers at the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area. Not as far as the eye can see but more than the eye can count.
I gotta get out on the street and shoot something new. For now, one more close-up of the business end of a sunflower. The post might be better described by something besides my words:
All of the recent sunflower pictures were taken in the Columbia Bottom State Conservation Area. Bottom here means river bottom land and sometimes flood plain, so there has to be a river nearby. This is the Missouri, just above its confluence with the Mississippi. That's around the bend to the right. It's interesting to stand on the point of land right at the junction and watch the waters mix. The Mississippi is very muddy and the Missouri much less so. You can see the two streams go a long way before they mix completely.
I gotta go find something sticky for theme day but what? Ice cream on the pavement?
Everybody who goes to see the sunflowers in the state conservation area wants some snaps. I'm no exception, of course. Phone cam pictures can be fine if you use it well. One advantage of the flowers heliotropic behavior is that they can all be facing you at the same time. The disadvantage is that means they are all backlit. Improvise, improvise.
I suppose it's accurate to say that I am someone more of the unnatural / man made world than the natural. No Alexander von Humboldt I. There are only a few places more unnatural than New York City, my place of origin.
There are many lessons to be learned off the pavement. I said something in yesterday's post about the complexity of the sunflower. This is what it looks like in its early development. You can just see the elements of what it will become after a genetic explosion.
It is no wonder that bees are symbols of industry. Countless numbers of them were working the field I've been showing recently. I was puzzled by their activity, though, since I could not distinguish the pistils and stamens I remember from high school biology class.
It turns out that I don't know much about sunflowers other than their association with Mrs. C's home state of Kansas. They are complex. The points of those whorls (arranged in a Fibonacci pattern) are individual mini-flowers that will eventually become heavy with the seeds some people love to munch. They are heliotropes. In their early and middle stages the heads move from east to west in unison to follow the sun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helianthus_annuus . Some of the many things that city kids don't learn.
Why does one sunflower tower over the others? It looks so alert, as if keeping watch over a ragtag group of nodding heads.
The Sunflower State, although we'll be there in a couple of weeks. Mrs. C and I went on an excursion yesterday to an out-of-the-way corner of the suburbs, tucked behind the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. In one of the few good works of our benighted state government, the Missouri Department of Conservation maintains the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area, https://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/places/columbia-bottom-conservation-area, bottoms in the sense of river bottomland. It has planted 14 fields of sunflowers, staggered to bloom in sequence through the summer. Quite a sight.
The only issue with these pictures is the haze from the Oregon fires a half-continent away. This picture has been heavily edited in Photoshop and still lacks something, in my opinion.
