Build me up Buttercup

What can be more uplifting than a flower meadow in bloom in early June?

This meadow is just next to the spot where we were looking for yellow-bellied toads the other day. Walking through it took me back to my untroubled childhood days, when we were spending all day picking flowers and lying in the grass watching insects buzzing around.

These meadows are pretty rare nowadays, despite some efforts to re-establish plant diversity in urban areas. My heart jumped to find myself standing right in it. Immediately, I could identify dozens of species of flowers and grasses. Friendly buttercups, probably Ranunculus acris, dominated the view.

The beauty of the meadow was even more striking when I dived into it and took closer looks at the single blossoms and blades of grass. I switched to a macro lens, but the wind made it really difficult to keep the swaying buttercups in focus. Somehow I was able to take some nice shots, though.

One might think that a meadow like that with all its diversity and huge supply of nectar and pollen should be buzzing with instect life. Oddly, it was strangly quiet that day. Just the wind created ripples and waves moving through the field and we spotted just single butterflies, bees and beetles every now and then. A silent earth it has become.

On the wetter, muddy parts of the meadow another Ranunculus species caught my eye: Ranunculus flammula or banewort.

Seductive Sedum

During late summer, sedum species lure honey bees and other pollinators with fields of flowers to a rich nectar banquet. Bees and bumble bees are racing over meadows made of tiny pink and reddish flowers. Taking a look from up close those flowers look like huge fantastic landscapes for grazing animals.

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Above: Have a look at my personal favourites from this post.

Sedum flowers come in different shades, from greenish white to deep dark purple. I love the pink-green contrast which adds life to the images. Here I preferred to create a dreamy romantic ambience with slightly warmer colour tones and less contrast.

Viewed from above sedum flowers present themselves as densly packed and highly structured composite flowers offering beautiful patterns in every frame.

Viewed from the side the composite flowers occupy different levels creating landscapes with smooth hills and forests with fleshy broccoli-like tree trunks. Perfect grazing ground for our herds of insect pollinators.

The deep purple sedum varieties are my favourites since I just like strong colours. Especially when they contrast with the complimentary green or colourless backgrounds.
How many bees can you count in these pictures?!

Victorian Quest

Across the street lingers the entrance to a whole different world: the Victorian greenhouses of my city’s botanical garden. Their main attraction is an artificial pond inhabited by the giant water lilly Victoria cruziana. Its enormous leaves cover the main part of the water surface, their rims bend upwards revealing a series of spikes along the vessels. Impressive by their size alone, their true magic unfolds as soon as you take a closer look at their structural details. Come with me on a quest through this Victorian jungle!

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Although the leaves shine in a bright green colour, their undersides show distinct reddish hues. This results in interesting colour contrasts when captured in the same frame. Additionally, the structural difference of the smooth surface and the strong veins along the underneath adds to the tension.

Of course, giant water lillies aren’t cultivated for their impressive leaves alone. They do produce giant flowers, too. However, they are blooming only during a few nights in August, which is celebrated each year by visitors and photographers alike. The botanical garden even extends its opening hours especially for this event.

What I like most about this pond is its smooth water surface since there is no wind to disturb it (and no crocodiles). I love the mirror effects of the leaf structures and their reflections. Depending on what details are in the frame you can create wonderful abstract patterns and illusions of an exotic forest. Just imagine sitting on a canoe rowing through the channels between these huge spike covered green walls!

Lavender

Another post about withered floral structures (see Withered Structures), but this time vertical lines are in the focus …and out of focus as well. The erect floral projections of the lavender flowers (Lavendula sp.) create a forest of slender greyish stalks with the dried flower buds on top. The newly emerging blue green leaves form a mysterious background for this strange cold forest.

Dowesee

So there’s this little botanical garden in the North of my city. It is quite pretty and they make an effort to make it look all natural, what I especially appreciate. On the sunny days in March I went there to take pictures. I’ve posted some already in Ambassadors of Spring and Withered Structures. Here I just put together some of the other images that I liked best.

Blue anemones are some of my favourites in spring, they are so delicate and somehow magical. I like how the light shines through the petals and the flowers seem to hover above the grass.

Hyacinths are royal guests in gardens during springtime. They have oppulent flowers in various bright colours and shades, and their fragrance is all over the place. They are definitely the eye catchers. Above I love how the pictures turned out showing the contrasts between the white soft flowers in the back and the rough black rock in the front that looks like the surface of an asteroid. I put two versions next to each other with different focal points. Personally, I prefer the one with the rock in focus. The third picture highlites the contrast between the dark purple and white flowers, also in and out of focus.

Siberian squills (Scilla siberica) are little cousins of hyacinths and can cover whole meadows in spring turning them into mystical bright blue carpets. Here I focus on fragile single plants that contrast against the rough or plain (back)ground.

Below you’ll find the location of this beautiful little piece of land in Braunschweig.

• Doweseeweg

Withered Structures

Spring is not only an ideal time to go out looking for colourful flowers, there are also plenty of floral structures to be found. Withered skeletons of what was once fresh and juicy. Faded colours of what was once bright in bloom. Hydrangeas offer a great motiv for those structures. Here I found some with their heads in front of a background of dead leaves, leading to a wonderful monochromatic landscape with various contrasts.

I played around with saturation and colour temperature, resulting in images with completely different moods. However, I find both versions very beautiful and both highlighte the delicate details of the composite flowers. Which ones do you like best?

Letting dead plants stay until spring hasn’t only a decorative purpose, many components of these plants offer shelter for insects and other small animals during winter time as well as nesting material for birds and mammals.

My Bleeding Heart

Another highlight on my balcony in spring is the bleeding heart or Lamprocapnos spectabilis. It is popular in gardens for its pink and white heart-shaped flowers that contrasts nicely with its light green stems and leaves. It is also easily cultivated and shows up reliably in spring. It’s not native to Europe but to the temperate regions of Eastern Asia (e.g.: Korea, Japan, China and Siberia). I usually prefer to have plants on my balcony that belong to our native flora, but this flower is just too pretty in pink to not have it around. It is toxic and should be handled with care. Many parts of the plants are quite thin and when the sun shines through them, you can capture beautiful effects and bright-dark contrasts.

Pretty Pulsatilla

One of my favourite flowers on my balcony is the pasque flower or Pulsatilla. Its big violet flower heads reliably show up in spring and provide nectar, pollen and shelter for bees and bumblebees. Also they are very pretty and decorative and they have a nice long flowering period. They also come in different shades like ruby red and white. Pasque flowers are a popular motiv for photographers because the whole plant is densely covered with soft little white hairs. Those hairs scatter light and produce beautiful effects if images are taken from the right angle, especially in the light of early mornings or at dawn. Here, I was too lazy to get up early, but I could use a black background to achieve a contrasting effect.

In the wild pasque flowers grow on sunny, calcium-rich soils and are under protection in Central Europe. They are toxic and have been used as traditional medical plants.

I love the complementary contrast of violet and bright yellow. In the images above the hairs are not readily visible due to the brighter background.

Ambassadors of Spring

Early in spring, in February and March, the forest floor comes to life with thousands of little white flowers, their delicate blossoms hovering over a bed made of fresh green leaves. It’s Anemonoides nemorosa (syn.: Anemone nemorosa), commonly known as wood anemone which belongs to the Ranunculaceae family, the same family as the buttercup. The flowers pop up early in spring catching the first sunshine hours before the trees shoot out their leaves and cover the forest floor in shade. Hence they are an important food source for bees and other pollinators at the end of the cold season.

I love to go through the light forests in early spring since the floor is covered with all the early flowering plants, like violets, fumeworts, yellow anemones and of course the omnipresent wood anemones. You can easily catch me crawling on the floor trying to take good shots of all those flowers. Have a look at some of my pictures I took the other day in a little botanical garden in the North of my city:

I was also lucky to catch some early bees on camera, collecting pollen:

Let’s go hiking, baby!

Another time back home in the Palatinate Forest. The weather was perfect for a little hike. This time we decided to take a trip to the „Geiersteine“ (engl.: vulture rocks) near Annweiler. You will later see why we chose that spot. But on the way up to the rocks I loved to take a look at all the little things along our way: Sweet chestnuts, heather, feeding hover flies, ferns and flowers beyond their time.

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Sun bathing rock lizards were our steady companions on the way up. They are everywhere on the withered red sandstone rocks and dart off hastily as soon as you come too close.

The sun shone through the canopy and drew patterns of light and shadow on the rocks and on the forest floor. And the higher we got, the more stunning the views became. I love to rest my eyes on the soft green forest hills that reach all the way to the horizon, contrasting with the wild formations of the red cliffs against the blue sky. Feels like home.

Even on top of the cliffs light and shadow cast interesting effects on rocks and plants. As usual I couldn’t stop taking pictures all the way.

The Geiersteine are part of several sandstone outcrops in the Southern Palatinate Forest, just East of the little village Lug, near Hauenstein. Not far lies the famous historic castle „Trifels“ which can also be seen from the cliffs.

• Lug