Heavy Metal Hits

Metallic blue is a preposterous color which behaves badly in front of a camera. Which makes the genus Eryngium the naughtiest of them all. So bravo to our Talking Plants Flickr Pix of the Week winner, who we trust did not doctor this photo of Eryngium alpinum -- the so-called alpine sea holly -- posing here in all its impossibly blue-osity.

Thank you Canadian TP friends Rob and Sharon Illingworth for posting this little portrait of E. alpinum, a perennial that likes its feet in fast-draining soil, its head in full summer sun, and its neighbors some breathing space away.

photo credit: Rob Illingworth

 

I find this genus so captivating, its infertile blue bracts (the feathery bits) so ridiculously showy, its color so consistently elusive, and its demeanor so percussive, I thought I'd regale you with a couple more close-ups. Ready, Mr. DeMille?

This was taken in Switzerland more than two decades ago. It's a decidedly more purple look at Eryngium alpinum, the same plant as our Flickr Pix of the Week.

photo credit: Dr. Robert Thomas and Margaret Orr copyright California Academy of Sciences

 

I'll wait for you while you check out this gorgeous shot also taken in a Swiss meadow but just last year.

Awesome, right?

OK ... let's give the alpine eryngiums a rest, and move on to a different species (stop groaning). Drumroll, please...

Killer photo, isn't it? Now take a close look at those bracts -- the Elizabethan collars around the fertile flowers -- and check out the textural difference between this puppy and the two above. So cool!

photo credit: htop

 

What, you're not awed? I'll find your weakness yet.

Maybe it's native plants, in which case, meet the little guy from Kansas, E. leavenworthii. This is one anatomically nice annual. You'll have to tell me whether it works as a garden plant -- maybe in a meadow? -- but at least you Kansans, Texans and Oklahomans get to tiptoe through fields of it in summer.

If I might quote from the photographer, botanist Tom Clothier, "Eryngium leavenworthii is nothing short of fantastic with its metallic purple stems and flowers". He also notes that the flowers' stamens come out as bright blue filaments, which you can see in the still-blooming flower heads, the ones that look spray painted. photo credit: Tom Clothier

 

OK, I'm just about done, but I must point out that even Shakespeare took note of eryngium.

"Rain me eringoes...." says Falstaff of the candied eryngium root. Turns out it was both a celebrated sweet, and an aphrodisiac.

1:55 AM ET | 08-30-2007 | permalink

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