Archive for the 'bellflower' Category
Beach combing
Although we are not suffering from such severe heat waves and drought as the rest of Europe, the water levels are low in the lakes. This provided me an opportunity to walk on the shore of the Loossjön lake, as during normal water levels you either get bog or forest right to the edge of the water, making it impossible to follow the shoreline. The lake is at least partly artificial though, I’m not entirely sure but I reckon that there used to be a small lake that was then made larger when a dam was built. The dead and sunken trees that are lining the shore are proof of this, especially all the pine roots which at some places build up large lattices and make me wish that I could take one of them home.
It started to look like these roots would be the most interesting thing on the shore, when I suddenly came across some flowers growing right in the water (not waterlilies!). I was fascinated – I had never seen this flower before! Happily I settled down to photograph them and tried to ignore the multitude of horse flies that fill up the gaps that mosquitos leave when it’s sunny (although sometimes you get pestered by both). When I got home, I checked my flower book and ID’d the flower as Lobelia dortmanna (water lobelia (EN), notblomster (SW), nuottaruoho (FI)). Apparently, a fairly common flower, so I must have just been missing it until now.
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I discovered another new flower on the shore as well, but close to the parking. I tidied it up and was about to get my camera from the car, when another car appeared. I just stared at the people in disbelief – they went swimming right in front of the the flowers I was going to shoot! I was so mad I could’ve screamed, this really is not the first time a similar thing has happened. I took a deep breath, counted to ten, and did my shoreline walk instead. The light was long gone by the time I got back, not that it really mattered – a new car load of people had arrived instead, swimming in front of the flowers. Oh well.
No commentsFleur du jour – Harebell
Campanula rotundifolia
- English: Harebell
- Swedish: Liten blåklocka
- Finnish: Kissankello
It’s an usually cold day for July, and then it also rained a little bit. I opted to photograph some flowers close to home and these harebells couldn’t really get much closer – about 5 metres from my front door! The wind wasn’t making this easy as the harebells have a tendency to sway from the slightest whisper of a wind, but I managed to squeeze in a few sharp shots. Out of the whole bunch of harebells growing there, these two stood out – diagonally leaning to opposite directions to create a dynamic composition, with a clean background.
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Image specs: ISO 200, f5.6, 1/160, Canon 300mm f4L, 31mm ext. tube
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With nothing better to do, I explored the forest and found three more of the lesser butterfly orchid, all of them quite withered. It looks like I really got lucky to find the one I did at first… because it was the only one still reasonably photogenic. There are also some old remains of more of them, so had I ventured in the forest just a couple of weeks earlier, I’m sure I would’ve found these orchids quite easily. But now I will just make a note for next year…
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