Botany Photo of the Day

An email I received a few minutes ago (please note that although my name is attached as the commenter, I'm the recipient of the message below, not the sender):

“I got hooked on this site becuase of the beauty of the flowering plants that were featured daily. I shared the site with friends and we always mentioned the Photo of the Day and how beautiful it was.

Lately, we have been asking ourselves where the beauty has gone? Just thought you could pass this along to whomever put the photos up on the site.”

I disagree with the emailer--there are plenty of sites with just beautiful plants! The BPD site fascinates me daily...I often click onward to explore more from the links, as yesterday, reading the piece on fractals from the Romanesco photo; or today, learning of a plant I didn't know existed...following links to find that there is a Heptacodium growing in Missouri! I also find the photography at this site to be first rate, often artful; that is, of a calibre I would want many of the photos to hang on my walls! Nothing but "thanks" here...please don't change for cosmetic affect!

Thanks very much for this Web site! The photographs are wonderful and the text descriptions are very interesting. I was never interested in Botany until I discovered this site (through a dashboard widget). Thanks again and keep up the great work!

It has been a purposeful choice to reflect the temperate seasons; summer with its showy flowers, spring with its ephemeral beauty, autumn's harvests and golds, and the subject of the email, wintertime with (at least locally) its greens, fungi and plant architecture.

Although we are embedded in a culture of “always on” and “on demand”, it would be wrong to expect that of a place that attempts to reflect nature's pace. I have the (mistaken?) belief that people who could only eat strawberries in the two weeks of the year that the strawberries were locally available enjoyed them more. Now, we can eat “fresh” strawberries year-round – what have we gained and what have we lost?

On a more technical note, I apologize if I've somehow misled you into thinking botany is only flowering plants. If anything, flowering plants are overrepresented here. I need to do a better job of covering other aspects of botany (such as plants under the microscope and algae) – by necessity, these will mean fewer photographs of flowering plants. I'd be happy to share with you a site that only concentrated on a daily photograph of flowers (I'd enjoy it myself!) if someone would go to that effort, but I've yet to find one.

Thank you again for a facinating post - a photography technique I want to play with, and a shrub I didn't know about. I appreciate your committment -

Heptacodium miconioides - Z6-9 - A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants, Brickell, Cole, Zuk
Heptacodium miconioides - 'very hardy' - Hillier Manual of Trees & Shrubs, 2003
Heptacodium miconioides - Z6 - Heronswood catalogue, Hinkley

Daniel
As someone who grew up in the southern hemisphere and only minimally exposed to the northern floras your work here is valuable and exiting to me. It has introduced me to a lot of plants that I remember seeing in taxonomy class through old out of focus 35mm slides. (greatlink on EOS cameras by the way!) with your comments and areas to see the plants in the UBC garden it is a great resource.

Please keep the photographs and links coming.

Thank you for the effort in keeping Botany alive!!

Pierrot

Today's post is a very striking and hauntingly beautiful image. Sure, standards of beauty vary. Thanks for having the courage to go outside the accepted boundaries. I'd love to see more images like today's.

Matt

I agree that this atypical photogragh is absolutely stunning!

Could I also expect the possiblity ( dare I ask?) of various root displays? ie. some typical and atypiclal forms of growth and health
issues.

Transfixed to my screen in anticipation of tommorrows' works of natural art.

Thankyou.

Hear!hear!
to all of us who enjoy all of these pages!!
what is the common thread ??
Life!
living things, as diverse as night and day, from weeds to wonderful flowers and fruits, the strengths and memories stored in the seeds, to live, and live again, we have much to learn from our forefathers, the plant kingdom!!

A wonderful technique you used for this! Has a bit of that infrared feel to it, with a wonderful flowing composition.

Very nice!!

bpotd keeps the pride for todays plant enthusiasts. i subscribe because of the quality of imagery, subject matter, and information. I hope to see more posts like the one today - if people want to see pictures of flowers i suggest they subscribe to "Better Homes and Gardens"

I've really enjoyed this month's pictures but I do agree with you Daniel re flowering plants being overrepresented. I'd love to see a few more conifers and cycads but then I'm just biased towards them.

I now look at BPOTD every day, after being introduced via a Mac Dashboard widget. The site is a wonderful reminder of the beauty and complexity generated by those molecules that I pursue day after day (DNA lab geek).

Flowers, schmowers, I want to see more fungi...

Heptacodium miconioides survives -20 degrees Celsius in southern Sweden. I know of two specimens of about 3-4 meters height.

To add to the chorus, I really love that you reflect both temperate seasons and non-flower beauty. With a narrower spread I think the "botany" part of the site's name would be inaccurate, and the botany is what drew me here (I found your site by typing "botany" into Google blogsearch).

Striking - I have always been most interested in diverse types of bark and wonder how their environment over the course of time caused their distinct features.

everyone has their different definition of "beauty" ... I am glad your definition of what is fascinating and appealing in botany is much broader than that of the original emailer and friends, who wrote "Lately, we have been asking ourselves where the beauty has gone? "

Sigh.

The comment about eating fresh strawberries only when they are fresh and locally available... so true. If only every one of us could see the beauty in everyday life ... the beauty in a patch of rough bark, the beauty in a seedpod or decaying log or slime mold. Then we would feel as rich as we could ever want to be!

Daniel no matter what kind of photo you post each day, I look at it with anticipation and enjoyment. You have stretched my horizons to the corners of possibility and I thank you for your persistence with BPOTD. I would be sad if you ever stopped posting here. Kudos to you for your amazing ability with your camera, for seeking out other photographers like myself who are mere amateurs, and for always posting with an interesting botanical or photographic link. I love your site!

Thanks, Maureen, thank you very much.

I live in Canada, a bit North of Ottawa, in USDA zone 4 and I have two specimen of Heptacodium Miconoides surviving winter here without a problem, although the elongation of the pink sepals is sometimes cut a bit short by our earlier cold weather. You might be surprised to learn that there are some specimens growing in Quebec city, in zone 3 (USDA)...

Oups! I just realized that this is a Canadian site... I should have mentionned the Canadian zones instead. So, I live in zone 5 and Quebec city is in zone 4. This tree does just fine for us as well! I love it but it is practically unknown here. I have not noticed it any other garden of my area (and I LOVE peeking at other people's gardens).