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

Transmitted Light Week continues!

I think I may be self-sabotaging: on yesterday's walk with Sheba, I wound up collecting several dead leaves. Brought them home, and then spent half an hour or so taping them to the kitchen window, getting pictures, and pulling them down. I think I probably got enough photos yesterday that I technically lost ground. (I may have gone a little nuts with the oaks.) But oh well. I'll still be ahead for the week.

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

Iris cv. There seems to be some kind of mathematical pattern to how lit up the different veins are, but I can't quite figure out what it is.

Rheum sp. Whatever. A lot of transmitted light photos wind up looking like this.

Acer platanoides key, red cv. This seemed like a good idea at the time, though now that I look at it again, six months later, I'm not sure I like it. In person, it was very pretty, though. I guess the camera didn't capture what I was hoping to capture.

Philodendron bipinnatifidum (?) 'Spicy Dog.' From the venation, I think it probably is either P. bipinnatifidum or a hybrid of something with P. bipinnatifidum: it looks very much the same, except that P. bipinnatifidum's leaves are more deeply split. The plant is growing fine for me inside, though it's getting to the point where I think I'm going to have to find it another spot already: it's gotten big fast.

Iresine herbstii 'Blazin' Rose.' I like this photo better than the Iresine picture from Sunday.

Unknown Spiraea cv. I wouldn't have had any idea on the ID for this plant had it not been flowering when I took the picture. Very pleased with how it turned out: this is probably my favorite from the batch.

Solenostemon scutellarioides 'Tilt a Whirl.' I'm surprised at how similar this is to the last 'Tilt a Whirl' picture I took, a long time ago.

Liriodendron tulipifera. The full-size photo is nice. I was really excited about tulip trees this spring, when they were blooming, and even though we don't actually want to plant a lot of trees in back ('cause I want whatever sunlight we can get for the plants inside; it's bad enough having the maple out there blocking a lot of the afternoon light), I thought about trying to get one of these. Then I found out they get to be 120 feet tall (eventually) and have a tendency to fall apart in high winds, and I gave up on that plan.

Heuchera 'Green Spice.' I feel like I ought to like this one better than I do. I mean, the texture is interesting, it's in focus, there are interesting shapes. I think I must be having trouble with the color combination. Not a big fan of mustard yellow and brown.

Schlumbergera 'Caribbean Dancer,' petal. Probably Schlumbergera petals are too small to do this effectively, but at last it's a nice, bright color.

Random plant event: Rheum sp. flowers

We had a small patch of rhubarb in the back yard when I was growing up; I don't remember anybody ever doing anything with it -- Mom didn't make strawberry-rhubarb pies or anything -- but it was there, and I was sort of fond of it. (Maybe that's where my appreciation for big-leaved plants comes from.)

I don't remember it ever flowering, though. Not once. So this was a surprise:


Pretty sure I would have remembered that.

I assume that probably one is supposed to cut off the flowers, to direct energy to the leaves and stems. I mean, that's usually the way, and I think I've seen one person's plants in town with the flowers cut off and lying next to the plant. I don't think Dad or (especially) Mom would have bothered with this -- like I said, we never actually did anything with the rhubarb; it was essentially an ornamental for our purposes. So bothering to cut off flowers would have been weird. Would being in the shade (between an apple tree and what was either a maple or a walnut) have prevented flowering? Do some varieties just not flower? I'm correct that this is rhubarb, right?

Whatever the explanation, the flower stalks on these plants are huge. They also don't look very much like flowers, unless you get in really, really close. But they are:


Dainty, almost.