repetition in nature

If you squint at this image long enough you may, like me, start to see a wire-frame sculpture of a saguaro cactus. Lowly motherwort and the majestic saguaro cactus?  Sure. Nature repeats simple forms all the time. And lets not forget to take note of what looks like the always beautiful Fibonacci spacing of those calyx (calyces?).  Simple motherwort revealing the secrets of the universe.

motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca)

you can’t con a con artist

I saw a mat of wild cucumber vines choking out some roadside brush. Finding the prickly fruit quite interesting, I stopped to pick some for today’s STILL. I had to wade into a thicket in flip flops to get to it. So I got as close as I comfortably could, and then just reached in and grabbed. Out came my specimen and a clever hitchhiker. The pair made me smile. A freeloader hitchhiking on a freeloader. Now that’s resourceful.

wild cucumber fruit (Echinocystis lobata) and burdock seedhead (Arctium)

survival of the fittest

Our cranes are still molting. It feels a little late as I believe they will be migrating soon. I trust they know what they are doing . They have been around a whole lot longer than we have. Here is what wiki says:

Sandhill cranes have one of the longest fossil histories of any extant bird. A 10-million-year-old crane fossil from Nebraska is said to be of this species, but this may be from a prehistoric relative or ancestor of sandhill cranes. The oldest unequivocal sandhill crane fossil is 2.5 million years old, older by half than the earliest remains of most living species of birds, primarily found from after the Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary some 1.8 million years ago.

two sandhill crane feathers (Antigone canadensis)

not everyone takes the same path

Sometimes life throws you a few curve balls. Right now I feel a bit like this garlic flower. Bent but not broken.

garlic flower

animal, vegetable, mineral?

The cockscomb I photographed the other day is still in fine form, and every time I pass it it reminds me more of coral than a flower. So, naturally, I needed to photograph it again–as I see it.

cockscomb celosia (Celosia argentea var. cristata)