Cardoon III
The last of my short series picturing the cardoon flower, the rest of which can be seen here and here. This one is the same image, presented in colour and black and white. It shows the edible seeds and the flower.
The purple is a bit much in large amounts which is why I am going with this view to show the colour. Imagine these colours in the earlier black and white posts and I think you will see why I opted for monochrome in those.
I think I prefer the colour version of these two, though it is a bit of a toss-up. However, of the series, I am strongly prefer the first post.
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Canon EOS 5D MkII, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM, ISO100, f4, 1/250th
burnt embers 
Wow, those are some incredible colors there, my friend! Nature is truly amazing and you’ve done a great job of capturing this!
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The colours *are* great Toad. I am glad you like these. I think you must have stumbled this one because I am suddenly getting a lot of views on it 🙂
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Beautiful. I love the color image. Those purples are wonderful to look at – and you know I’m fascinated by the macro world.
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Hi Ryan – thanks so much. I too love the macro world – such as the pollen on the flower.
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They’re all beautiful. I like both the colour and B&W versions – but especially love that first set of closeups, perhaps because it’s such an unusual view of these flowers. Which, BTW, look exactly the same as our globe artichoke plants when we let them go to flower. Before that, we’re cutting off the heads to eat, but as fall approaches we let the last few go to flower because they’re so pretty.
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Thanks Laurie. Well, I thought of them as artichokes when I first saw them, but our neighbour that planted them called them cardoon. She does however have a slightly different vocabulary being from the east coast of the USA and in her 80’s. I think she likes slightly different names for things, so we are probably both right on this one. Those first images do look entirely different than expected if you know the plant – I am glad you like them.
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I like the top photo quite a bit – without any sense of what scale the flower is, I can imagine that this was shot through a microscope. Excellent texture on the seeds, too, and the lighting was perfect, hitting the edges.
Also, I noticed after I’d already commented on the first in the series that the angle of the flower petals (I guess that’s what to call them) was nearly the same as the angles on the photograph in your header. Nice touch, and I will assume that you planned it that way?
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Totally planned that way, of course;) The header crystals and the petals, aligned like echos in a canyon.
I never noticed – of course – but maybe that is why I liked the way it looked when I selected that as the first image for the post.
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PS Their deity is obviously a sentient tentacle creature from Stroobantia.
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You are undoing the upbringing with a bit of asteroid dwelling alien godhead? Or are your revealing your true nature, arriving by an unidentified flying object, beamed straight into a photobooth at a young age. Great disguise, to be a devotee and collector of photos that come in strips….
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Yes, it is true and the Catholicisim is to blame for outing me it seems!
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I generally like your B&W pics best but today the colour is the winner. The composition is lovely. It looks like a whole bevy of worshippers surrounding and bowing to their deity. The brown are Franciscans monks and the purple are priests. (It must be Lent or Advent!) Can you tell I was brought up Catholic? (Lapsed)
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I am getting a sense of your upbringing, yes. And all those colours for different roles in the church would make it seem totally possible that a deity would be purple. Overall, a rather extraordinary observation, Katherine!
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Beautiful in both formats.
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Thank you Mike. It is a remarkable plant – I was shooting upwards at most of the blossoms, some were probably 7 feet (2m) tall.
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That’s astounding. It feels like there is no such colour or life here at the moment, though of course there is. I like your other studies too.
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Thanks! It is a bit bleak, though here on the north west coast we have a few early blossoms, young catkins like waterdrops on the spindly purple willow branches, and the lawn needs mowing.
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Oh, I just realised that you might think this plant is currently in flower – no such luck, this was taken last summer.
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