Wednesday, January 27, 2010

[Exceptionally] Pretty pictures: transmitted light -- Part XXIV

Some very nice stuff from this round. I think you'll be pleased.

(The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.)

Heliconia psittacorum 'Bright Lights.' It's not grown for the colorful leaves, obviously.


Breynia discticha 'Roseo-Picta.' Difficult to photograph, because the leaves are very small (about an inch, inch and a half long and wide -- roughly 2.5-4 cm). Not as uninteresting as it might have been, I suppose.


Alocasia 'Frydek.' I think the message here is "Left Turn Only."


Philodendron 'Congo Rojo.' There seem to be only so many ways to vein a Philodendron; almost all of them look like this to some degree or another, at the vein level. The spots are most likely areas where the developing leaf was damaged before it hit maturity; such spots are permanent, kinda unsightly, and occasionally lead customers to completely lose their shit. But it's nearly impossible to prevent spots from happening, especially if you're producing them on a wholesale kind of scale.


Tradescantia zebrina. Well, the color is nice, even if it's not otherwise terribly interesting.


Syngonium podophyllum, didn't catch the entire cultivar name but it involved the word 'Gold.' There's a 'Gold Allusion' out there, but the pictures I found for it were not particularly golden, nor did they look much like the plant in question.


Codiaeum variegatum NOID. Should it surprise me that, as much as I like taking pictures of croton leaves, I never ever ever have even a moment of wanting to own one again? I mean, it's like, never. I don't care about having one. But I guess I want others to have them, so I can take pictures. This seems weird.


Stromanthe sanguinea 'Triostar.' This reminds me of something non-plant-related, but I can't think of what. I want to say either fabric or ice cream, but I'm not a big noticer of fabric, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen ice cream that looked like this, so I have not idea where that feeling is coming from.


Codiaeum variegatum NOID. This picture is kind of interesting as a negative: it winds up looking a bit like white "clouds" on a blue "sky."


Maranta leuconeura erythroneura. Just . . . perfect, if I do say so myself.


13 comments:

JP said...

Wow! I give them all ooos AND ahhs...

Unknown said...

I like these all so much, I hope you don't expect me to pick just one. They just make me happy to look at them. It feels like we're in some other world to be surrounded by these jewelled richnesses.

Liza said...

Those are gorgeous, all of them, especially the last.

That triostar, if I squint and imagine different colors, reminds me of the view from an airplane, with soft clouds hovering over fields.

CelticRose said...

The Stromanthe sanguinea 'Triostar.' does look like fabric.

I love the color on the Tradescantia zebrina.

Andrew said...

Stromanthe sanguinea 'Triostar' - to me, if you look at just the white markings on it, it looks like waves crashing on a beach.

Anonymous said...

Hmm... guess I don't have the poetic imagination of everyone else. When I looked at 'Triostar', the first thing that popped into my head was "Star Trek" insignia!

mr_subjunctive said...

Fields from an airplane, waves on a beach, and Star Trek insignia are all better than anything I came up with. I particularly like the Star Trek one: it's very nearly exact.

Anonymous said...

That Maranta is beautiful.

Brenda in Idaho said...

Absolutely beautiful colors!!
You're a bonafide Master Photographer... :)

João Viveiros said...

Hey!
I've been following your blog for some time now and only now had the decency of commenting (i know, how of bad of me). Anywho, I'd like to congratulate you on your blog! I think it fills the gaps that many other sites on plants have, which are a sense of humour, a layed back way of approaching things and not showing those picture perfect plants all the time, as well as adimitting the difficulties in tending to plants(some sites annoy because all the plants look so damn flawless, and it makes feel bad about mine lol). And i absolutely looooove the pictures you take of the foliage!
Also, seeing someone as obcessed with plants as me makes very happy (I've been asked things like: "you like caring for plants? oh my god, get a life!).
So, keep going and i'll be sure to keep visiting!

Best regards,
João (in case you're wandering about the wierd name, i'm portuguese ;) )

João Viveiros said...

Oh, and by the way: when i said the whole picture perfect thing, i didn't mean that your plants don't look great, which they do.

lynn'sgarden said...

Though all are great, Mr. Subj, that last one...WOW! Perfectly captured!

Saby said...

Artificial plant. Stromanthe sanguinea 'Triostar' reminds you of the print on a slightly finer artificial plant.