The Secret Life of Plants

We have had a very dry spell here for weeks, so I have been watering the garden a lot and thinking about and talking to the beauty of life in front of my eyes - just like any gardener and plant lover does and in line with the Royal Botanic Garden of Sydney! 

Talking to plants - or maybe just observing them during watering -  helps understand their life and requirements. 

And so far, I thought, that that was the reason for the "green thumb"  some people have. 

Our gardener Paul, however, drew my attention to an essay in the New Yorker some time ago: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-intelligent-plant   about the amazing and still quite unresearched communication between plants.    Just  because  they have a sedentary and slow life style, it does not mean they are "stupid" or less well evolved than animals.  On  the contrary,   someone so well adapted to be able to harvest food and energy from a tiny single plot of land by using water and light only   ( and    some minerals from the ground), and grow to amazing sizes, deserves more recognition and attention and will surely have evolved a communication system to optimize adaptation to varying circumstances. 

Which leads me back to my past life as a researcher of Streptomyces, a "sedentary" soil bacterium with fungus-like mycelial growth. These bacteria produce a great variety of secondary metabolites, very complex molecules, many of medicinal value, among them several different classes of antibiotics. Research in that field has been reduced in the past decades, because we thought, we had found enough substances to treat any bacterial illness, but the occurence of multiple resistences has lead to a rethink. Recently, research   has been going back to searching for new natural antibacterial agents.
Why would plants produce such elaborate molecules and go to the length of evolving them - just for the protection of the self ? Why not for communication and harvesting information from other species? Their senses may be different, some recipient "organs" not yet identified, but some researches go as far as predicting a plant "nervous" system. Some plant species have been shown to react to stress by other plants in the neighbourhood. Several hundred different complex molecules, mostly unidentified, have been found .... But does that mean, that plants might even feel "pain"? What kind of harm do we do by cutting down plants, harvesting or even eating? And what does that mean for all the vegetarians? Certainly, living plants have a right to live as well? 
Since reading that article, I certainly go about gardening with a renewed view of plants' lives. But  somewhere  up or down  the food-chain, we cannot always "be nice". The animals, that we are, have to inflict pain on other living creatures now and then to sustain life. Anyway, my garden walks this week produced a couple of image overlays and other compositions. As the sky was overcast, colours and contrasts were perfect for some macro work. 

                                 Detail of Allium giganteum

The Rose "Abraham Darby" with an overlay of flowers from Cotinus coggygria "Royal Purple"

                         A columbine (Aquilegia) with Centranthus ruber

                         more Aquilegia compositions

                                     where is the bee?

The Photographic Gardening Diary - Plant Compositions in May

Convallaria majalis growing under a roof of large green and white hosta leaves 

Meconopsis cambrica, the Welsh poppy that I introduced to our garden with seeds from the seed distribution scheme of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), UK, a long time ago. In early spring the RHS sends seeds to their members, if they wish, and often of very interesting varieties. Here the fine yellow and orange poppies have found their place among azaleas; wild strawberries have joined them.

Geranium himalayense "Gravetye" under the  shrub Choisya "Aztec Pearl" with blue bells in the background

The very interesting fern Athyrium nipponicum var. metallicum next to the large green leaves of Phlomis russeliana (not yet in flower) and Carex pendulum in the back.

Meconopsis cambrica growing through a blue greyish hosta

A rare filled version of Salomon's Seal (Polygonatum odoratum "Flore Pleno") with Acer palmatum dissectum

 

Out of Focus

Do we need to see everything in focus?

A few years ago around my 50th birthday, I found that I needed to wear glasses, not only for reading (those glasses I need since my 40th birthday!) but also for distant objects. Suddenly seeing everything in perfect focus, inspired me to make pictures out of focus. We do not need to see details, when the first recognition already elicits the effects that we desire. This is especially true for common sights, visual icons, that we recognize instantly and that have been photographed a zillion times.

When I looked through the viewfinder in front of St. Basil's Cathedral and focus was still on manual from some previous setting, I saw the colorful outline of the spires and thought this just perfect, just enough to get that familiar feeling. No need for detail, just the impression was enough to raise the emotions that we feel when recognizing an old friend or a common sight.

Recently, inspired by the Exhibition in Frankfurt's Staedel "Birth of Impressionism"  with many paintings by Monet and other painters,  I returned to that method. Impressionists have often simply put rough colours on the canvas to indicate a form, which appears abstract on close inspection, but gives rise to recognizable shapes when viewed from the distance. In addition, I had found a book on photography with the surprising title "Why it does not have to be in focus" - very encouraging!

I made a couple of photographs where I put focus on manual and deliberately set the picture out of focus. This has to be done carefully:   with an open aperture of 2.8 or so, ideally using the DOF (depth of field)-control button if the camera has one, because otherwise the viewfinder might show you a picture out of focus, but the camera, accidentally on f/11 or similar, might shoot a perfectly fine, reasonably focused reproduction of reality.

The biggest hindrance though is, that I forget to use this technique when visiting those brilliant monuments like the Taj Mahal, where everybody is standing in line and strives to get the perfect picture. Setting the camera on the "wrong" manual focus  seems to be such a waste of precious time then ... I have tried to produce the effect in post-production, but it does not work well; it looks flat  - I have not found a reliable technique to reproduce a bokeh and I hate spending hours in front of the computer with photoshop layers and masks to produce a fake.  So with German thoroughness, I guess, I prefer to go to all those places again ...

                                                                   unsharpened with Gaussian blur.


Of course, there are other ways to photograph landmark sights and show just a reminder or memory or abstract composition, by using reflections or motion blur:

                                    not a highly irregular heartbeat:

                                       but  Istanbul's Bosphorus Bridge at night !

                                  Out of Focus ..

The Photographic Gardening Diary: Fröhliche Pfingsten!

Pfingstrosen (Paeonias; in German: "pentecost-roses") flower around the Christian holiday of "Pfingsten". The "tree peonies" - really shrubs -  flower a little earlier, the perennials afterwards. This year, the tree peonies were in full bloom mid- to end of May and we are still waiting for the herbaceous species in our garden.  

This is P. x lutea "Black Pirate", my favourite. Flowers are not really black at all, but dark red with a wild yellow bush of stamens inside. It is the earliest Paeonia to flower in our garden. She opened her first buds on May 10 .

This white  P. suffruticosa "Renkaku" grows on very weak stems, that we have to support with sticks. Its flowers are too heavy for them, a strange top-heavy breed that I cannot recommend, although the single flowers are phantastic. "Renkaku" flowers a few days later. 

Here decorated with forget-me-nots, that found their way around the flowers.

                                               
A wild herbaceous version that came as undergrowth from a blueish-violet tree peonie, whose colour we did not like - so we kept the wild form from underneath the graft area.  

The Photographic Gardening Diary : Climbing Etoile d'Hollande

This rose comes into flower a few days after Mme Gregoire Staechelin: the climber "Etoile d'Hollande". 

It is very different in character, very elegant, dark crimson red. Unfortunately, its long and rather stiff stems are prone to break off and it is a good idea to tie them  horizontally against wind break. Its flowers have the perfect, a bit bubbly scent. When I put my nose into the first blossom in May, memories of an endless warm summer come flashing back. So stick your nose into the flower if you can find one and it will drive a smile on your face.
Here, it is combined with Taxus baccata and the climbing Hortensia, Hydrangea anomala petiolaris. 

I planted the small Clematis "Gravetye Beauty" next to it, hoping for a playful softening effect on the rather strict elegance of the rose, but Gravetye Beauty comes at her own time a little after the first rose flowering is over,  and unfortunately never together with the rose. 

And here is an update on Mme Gregoire Staechelin! She has a very good year and is full of flowers these weeks. A fine digitalis has seeded itself in front of the rose and grows in perfect harmony.

The Photographic Gardening Diary: Rhododendron and Azalea

When the spring flowers and Helleborus have gone, Rhododendrons take over. All year round they build a useful, quiet dark green backbone to other plants, but in May and June they - together with Azaleas - have their heyday. They start in March with the early Rhododendron praecox, followed by Rhododendron impeditum in violet-blue. 

At the beginning of May the white Rhododendron "Cunningham's White" is dominant, with yellow markings in its face, followed by every other colour, yellow, orange, reds and pinks ...

                                         yellow Rhododendron luteum, the only one with a strong sweet scent

                                                                              opening azalea...

...with a visitor ....

Kilara and Ferrara

Mother and daughter moved to the beautiful Gestüt Hörstein today to spend the summer outdoors in the company of other mares and foals.

                                               with a view towards Frankfurt in the distance

The Photographic Gardening Diary - Mme Grégoire Staechelin

The first rose to come to flower in our garden this year is Mme Grégoire Staechelin. 

She opened the first huge pink blossom yesterday close to a wall and a window for protection and warmth. I planted her in 2003, on the north-eastern side of our house with morning sun. She seems to like it very much and has been thriving ever since. She is quite tolerant of shade - for the first few years she grew in the shade of a neighbour's Thuja, until their tree was felled. Her flowers have a soft nice scent and in autumn will produce an abundance of huge orange hips. It is best to remove most hips; otherwise she will be very exhausted the next year, produce few leaves only and will be susceptible to blackspot. With generous feeding and watering she will return in splendour every year.


Her common name is "Spanish Beauty" - she was bred in 1927 in Spain by Pedro Dot. And she is extraordinarily beautiful and clads herself in voluptuous flamenco-like pink-whitish large wavy petals.   Her name may have been chosen for someone from the art collecting Swiss Staechelin family, but I could not find out the exact story. I came upon that name by chance when I read about the record sale of Gauguin's "Nafea" this February, on view now for the moment at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel. I have used pictures of this rose for lots of conversion experiments with filters like these here: 

More Here (compositions). 

Plant of the Month : Choisya ternata "Sundance"

I have written about this shrub before, but it is so versatile, prolific and exuberant and has this heavenly evening vanilla-honey scent, that I want to show more pictures. Its common name is "Mexican Orange blossom" (Mexikanische Orangenblume). It really belongs in every garden. It is at its best now, all frost damage grown over and in full flower.

Here in combination with  Cotinus coggygria "Royal Purple" (Roter Perückenstrauch). 

                                   leaning against a wall

                                     A shiny rare visitor on the flowers: Großer Rosen- oder Goldkäfer (Protaetia aeruginosa)

A second species is  Choisya x arizonica "Aztec pearl". It has smaller spiky dark green leaves, stays more compact and flowers a little less profusely. It has the same heavenly scent, so I could not resist planting it as well. On the picture it sits in front of blue-bells.