The Skeletons of Dutch Amaryllis Blossoms
June 4, 2015. Reduced photos of two stems of amaryllis blossoms. See other photos in my new +Google album for June 2015. This repeatedly dividing bulb, now (like my cat, Buster) 15 years old, this year actually bloomed twice, then endured two weeks of nearly incessant rain followed by hot, true summer. So I made haste to record the structure which I'd never seen before.
This is what, inside. every glorious hippeastrum (Dutch amaryllis) contains to produce and to support the blossoms more than four inches across for more than a week (barring serious storms). In Louisiana we don't even take up the bulbs for the winter, and we plant the new bulbs directly in our soil a few months ahead. The pretty curly tendril belongs to the wild climbing fern on a nearby crepe myrtle. The sturdy tan husk cradles the black seeds (?).
I happen to be very fond of the inner, supporting parts of flowering plants, and I know where I got it. I first saw the photography of Karl Blossfeldt nearly a half century ago (see also the excellent pages in his Google Images) and responded to them even without thinking of why. Blossfeldt in fact saw the fundamentals of beauty in the arts in the forms of plants, a generation earlier than German modernism as such. Every aspect of his work and his teaching was original in his case. I cannot see something like these hippeastrum pods without seeing them in his terms.
Of course, handheld, in color, notwithstanding the brilliant intricacies of the Nikon 1 v.2 that I have only half mastered (though here I did use the close-up lens), especially with regard to metering, I cannot do anything like Blossfeldt's work. but I had to do what I could as soon as the sun was high enough.
Someone may see this Post and the June 15 album and go to the Blossfeldt article (from the Museum of Modern Art) and the excellent Google Images site for him.
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