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Early Purple Orchid (IV)
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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
Taken this afternoon, after work, this is an Early Purple Orchid (Orchis mascula). It is exactly the same flower as this one, just a few days older...
As you can see, just a few days have produced quite a bit of change in the flower and we now have around 35 flower spikes ready to flower (most were not even showing flower buds at the weekend, now they are showing colour and almost ready to burst). They should flower this weekend, and there will be another 30-40 flower spikes yet to come... and that is just this clump. I don't tend to photo the other clump because the vegeation is much more dense and they are much harder to get any distance from - yep you read that correctly - distance. Keeping you distance and zooming in on them, helps to throw the background out of focus.
The picture was taken in RAW (using a tripod, mirror lockup and timer release) on my longer lens, converted to jpeg and has just been cropped, resized and sharpened.
A few facts about orchids (non-scientific words here)
- they need a fungus in the soil for them to live,
- they can take anything upto 7 years from seed to the first leaf above ground
- they can take another couple of few years before they produce the first flowers.
- they don't always appear every year and can live underground for several years - I assume either dormant or living off the fungi
- the tubers for each plant (one plant per flower spike) come in pairs - one sustaining the plant, whilst the other grows to maturity to sustain in the next year.
- the tubers contain highly nutritious starch-like substance, called Bassorin
- this species inparticular (though not exclusively) used to be made into a drink in the 19th centrary, by digging up the tubers and grinding/grating them called a Salep (now illegal).
Please enjoy and feel free to comment and I will catch up with comments etc tomorrow.
PS - the black spot is a small beetle... |
jeanpaul, cecilia has marked this note useful
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Bonjour Emma
Vraiment très beau ! Belle composition, belles couleurs, et bel encadrement.
Très beau travail
Merci et au revoir...JP
- halki
![Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Note Writer [C: 249 W: 8 N: 105]](http://i1.treknature.com/misc/g-n-g.gif)
(469) - [2006-04-28 18:56]
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Hello Emma!
Very nice capture
Colours and light are great.
Thanks for posting
Very nice,I like the colour and the central capture...
Great shot.
Very sharp and clear image, Emma.
I love the colour of this orchid.
TFS.
![Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Star Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 2009 W: 99 N: 3252]](http://i1.treknature.com/misc/g-g-g.gif)
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