Anthers and stigma of Erodium cicutarium

[rjlittlefield]

This is Erodium cicutarium, a small member of the Geranium family. It is native to Eurasia but was introduced to the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. in the late 1800's and is now widely established in eastern Washington. It goes by the common names of Filaree, Crane's-bill, or Stork's bill, mostly based on the shape of the long, sharp seed pod.

The flowers are about 10-15 mm across. They are a pretty shade of pink, but do not seem very ornate.

As shown in this post, however, the center of the flower is a different matter entirely.

Hope you enjoy!

--Rik

Technical: Canon 300D with Olympus 38mm f/2.8 bellows lens at f/4 and 6.5X onto the sensor, stacked at 0.0005" focus step. Helicon Focus software with some manual retouching to reduce stacking artifacts.

[salden]

Beautiful image Rik. Flowers here in the NE have started to bloom, but nothing as nice as this one.
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Sue Alden

[Ken Ramos]

I always like to look at things like this through the stereomicroscope for some reason. I guess it is because of their shapes and colors. Nice image there Rik.
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Ken Ramos
Rutherford Co., Western North Carolina

"Social isolate?"

[beetleman]

A very excellent photo Rik. I love the colors of the pollen combined with the purple, and the focus and Depth are awesome....very beautiful image.
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Take Nothing but Pictures--Leave Nothing but Footprints.
Doug Breda

[Bruce Williams]

Absolutely jaw dropping quality Rik - I simply can't fault it. Macro at its very best.

Bruce

[Moebius]

Wow, I would love to see a closeup photo of one of those individual pollen grains (hint hint).

Beautiful.

Ken Nelson

[crotermund]

Awesome! I'm blown away. Exquisitely beautiful.
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Craig Rotermund
Canon 30D
Sigma 150mm

[rjlittlefield]

Thanks for the kind words, everybody!

This particular flower offered an unusual challenge -- it wouldn't stand still to get stacked! Like many dryland plants, these flowers wilt ferociously when their stems are cut. Despite that I had this one's stem stuck in a vial of water, and I was using IR-filtered lighting, my first attempt would have made a better movie than a stack. I aborted it halfway through when I realized that the flower had dropped about 1/4 frame from where it started. I thought about hanging the thing upside down, but that wouldn't work because I really wanted full frame and my stacking setup only works well with the camera in landscape orientation. What to do, what to do...

Finally I ended up making a small holding jig with copper wire and masking tape, to lock the flower in position. Even that wasn't quite perfect, but it was good enough for the software's auto-alignment to take care of the rest of the problem. I think the result came out pretty well, so I guess it was worth the trouble.

Ken, I gave your request my best shot. See this new post, Pollen of Erodium cicutarium.

If you'll settle for something perhaps not quite so extreme, see below for a crop of the image posted above.

--Rik

[Ken Ramos]

Well Rik, I took a gander at some of your other images of this flower and I must say I like these the best , not that there is anything wrong with the others, they are quite good but I just like these. Personal preference I suppose. I read somewhere or maybe seen it on one of those TV gardening shows, that a mixture of glycerine and water will keep cut flowers from wilting and drooping so quickly if they are immediately placed in the mixture the moment they are cut and that you should cut them, the stems, at a 45° angle. I am not sure of the glycerine to water mixture ratio but I would assume it would not be hard to find on the web somewhere.
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Ken Ramos
Rutherford Co., Western North Carolina

"Social isolate?"

[rjlittlefield]