One of the biggest and most beautiful blooms in the botanical garden is the Sacred Lotus. I was lucky enough to get a few shots over the last few weeks. While I've put them in chronological order according to the life of the plant, I believe this is actually two different blooms as I hear these only last for a few days.
Here is a lotus bud in the process of blooming. You can see another in the background that is not quite as far along.
I believe this is actually the first lotus picture I took and it is probably my favorite of the bunch. It just seems very peaceful and cheery.
If you look in the center of the flower you can just slightly see the squiggly inner bits. I am actually not a fan of the inside of the blossom, so I rotated a bit to try and block it out of the picture as much as possible.
And this is the Sacred Lotus in full bloom. I still don't think I like the yellow bit in the middle but I love the silky white and pink of the petals.
This weekend I am going to a different garden which is supposed to have an amazing orchid collection so perhaps I will have some orchid pictures to share in the near future.
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Very nice pictures though Lotus flowers are not among my favorites visually. However, the way this flower is "viewed" is fascinating:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelumbo_nucifera
I also was intrigued that the number of projections on the central yellow "core" was 11, not the commonest number one sees in nature, where there are many claims about the appearance of the Fibonacci numbers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number
However, I note that in other images of the Lotus this number is not 11.
Interesting! I've heard of the Fibonacci numbers before and I've tried to take a few mathematician friendly images as well. I wonder if this lotus is just a weirdo. I've also just read about fasciation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasciation and am now always on the lookout for such an example.
DeleteFascinating. I had never seen this term before but I have certainly seen examples of this type of thing. I guess a similar phenomenon is:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burls
but I usually don't find burls particularly interesting from the outside. But when burled wood is cut open the patterns one sees are fantastic. Many wood craftsman exploit the beauty of burled wood for artistic purposes.
Interesting. I've never seen burls before!
Delete