Carrots and Carots

Five interesting facts today include the following:  before the 17th century almost all cultivated carrots were purple.   This turns out to be a tremendous year for Queen Anne's Lace - a wild carrot - Daucus carot   Growing along road sides and in unused fields, there are clouds of white everywhere. This is considered a companion plant to crops, and was introduced to North America, as it attractive wasps to its small flowers in its native land.  It is documented to boost tomato plant production, and can provide a microclimate of cooler, moister air for lettuce. Other times it is considered a noxious weed:  It likely is a noxious weed here, given the volume of it. The story of its common name in North America is that both Anne, Queen of Great Britain, and her great grandmother, Anne of Denmark, are taken to be the Queen Anne for which the plant is named. It is so called because the flower resembles lace, prominent in fine clothing of the day; the red flower in the center is thought to represent a blood droplet where Queen Anne pricked herself with a needle when she was making the lace. I didn't remember that is is an edible plant - and that the flowers are sometimes battered and fried.  And people ask if Queen Anne's Lace is hogweed and is poisonous.  They bloom at the same time, but hogweed is cow parsnip - Heracleum maximum.  And Queen Anne's Lace also looks similar to Angelica - which is Wild Celery. I recall one of our summer activities as children was to put the flower stalks in jars of coloured water and the white flowers would turn colour.

To Blossom is To Bloom

I was thinking of the difference between the words flowers, blossoms, and blooms.   It seems like we wouldn't say "Look at that rose blossom".  Instead, we might say "Look at the rose blooming".   We think of fruit trees - apples, cherries, plums, almonds, peaches, etc as having blossoms, being blossom trees, and blossoming in the spring.  One site says that blossoms don't flower, but flowers do blossom. That seemed poetic indeed. Blooming seems to occur with flowers/flowering plants.   It doesn't seem typical to comment that the orchard is blooming.  We would comment that the roses are blooming.  These differences seem subtle and tricky, and refer to the literal meaning of flower, blossom and bloom.  To continue with the literal meaning, this comes from Collins English Dictionary for bloom.   1. countable noun A bloom is the flower on a plant. [literary , technical] ...the sweet fragrance of the white blooms. Harry carefully picked the bloom. Synonyms: flower, bud, blossom    2. in bloom 3. verb When a plant or tree blooms, it produces flowers. When a flower blooms, it opens. This plant blooms between May and June.  Synonyms: flower, blossom, open, bud    What about these distinctions between the words?  The Scrabble score for each of these words: blossom is 61 points - blossoming is 65 points bloom is 9 points - blooming is 63 points flower is 12 points - flowering is 66 points Our fantasy flowers in bloom today are lilies.

Skywatcher's Month

October is a sky-watching month according to National Geographic with Zodiacal Lights from October 1-15 "Starting about an hour before sunrise on Saturday, October 1, and lasting the next two weeks, keen skywatchers in the Northern Hemisphere can hunt down one of the most elusive astronomical phenomena visible in the sky: the zodiacal light.  This pyramid-shaped beam of light is easily mistaken for the lights of a far-off city just over the dark horizon in the countryside, and has also been called “false dawn.” But this light is more ethereal; it is caused by sunlight reflecting off cosmic dust between the planets. Amazing to think that today we’re peering at billions of dust-sized particles that were left behind after the planets formed about five billion years ago."

The Lotus

Lotus are blooming at the Cole's Pond store.  This lotus was captured over the span of two days and you can see the spots on the flower petals in the third photo.  I drove by yesterday and a second lotus is blooming - it looks like a darker pink.  However, Coles isn't open on Sundays so it'll be today that I get to find out.    The Lotus is a revered flower and plant from ancient times.  Its meaning was creation and rebirth and "was a symbol of the sun because at night it closes up and goes beneath the water and at dawn it climbs up above the water..." How about this 'fun fact':  the lotus flower is a very popular tattoo.

The Lotus

I was lucky to find a few lotuses over the last year that were close enough and in good light so that I was able to photograph the details of the flower petals and stamens inside.

It is a distinctive plant:  the flowers, seeds, young leaves and roots are all edible, and we can get canned pods to use in salads.  I didn't realize that lotus plant fibres are also used to make fabric.   

The lotus has been recognized as a religious and cultural flower of significance by the Egyptians and in the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism.  It is the growth of its pure beauty from the mud of the pond that captivates:  "I love the lotus because while growing from mud, it is unstained." (Chinese Confucian scholar Zhou Dunyi).

Today's images show why cultures associate it with elegance, purity and grace. 

Lotus - How Beautiful!

I find the Lotus flower to be amazing and magical.  Its centre is what makes it so wonderful - all the stamens around the dinner plate centre, and then petals in beautiful colours.

Here's an interpretation of the last image.