Happy New Year from Galen Garwood 2017

GREETINGS

Recently I posted on Facebook a photograph of a remarkable flower blooming in my garden, a ‘Spider Lily’ of the Amaryllidaceae family.

It has continued to captivate me. Like the magnificent Beaumontia Grandiflora I posted previously, it too blooms in clusters.

I wanted to try and photograph some sequence of the Spider Lily opening, as it does so considerably faster than the Beaumontia.

I set up my camera and tripod and waited most of the day. Nothing.

In late afternoon the elongated bud, rather much like Brâncuși’s ‘Bird In Space’ sculpture, suddenly and timidly began to open.

I couldn’t discern any movement because the human eye cannot track such slow events.

But I sensed it was ready to bloom.

The Anthers and Filaments were now visible inside.

I was expecting, hoping, to see it spread slowly out into space in a graceful ballet move, but a remarkable thing happened:

One of my two studio lights started fluttering and my eyes veered toward the light for a nanosecond.

When I looked back at the flower, it was fully open.

The newly born flower’s filaments had not yet begun to bend from the weight of such sweetness, the pollen, a deep ocher, waiting for the first gentle breeze.

The filaments stretched out of a luminous and delicate pouch that cradled the placenta below, in which the ovules reside and out of which the Stigma rises.

The design of the pollen pods (Anthers) is extraordinary; they are attached to the filament about two-thirds up on the pod, which allows for an optimum

rocking movement, attracting a vast number of passing insects.