flower as history: Grevillea formosa

After a day in the car in the rain, I pulled into the Hunter Valley Botanical Garden, just before closing, eager to get my knees wet.

Got especially wet for a Grevillea formosa, whose flower unrolls across the ground like a narrative scroll of familiar looping text.  From left to right you can read the life story of a flower: born with the tip of the style stuck in the flower, so that it grows as a loop, until finally the tip breaks free and soars.  Still further right, the flower going to oddly pealike seeds.

Comments

[Pica]

Jarrett -- good to see you back on here. (My RSS feed for you has been broken but is now fixed.)

[dale]

Scribbly, yes. Thank you. This is fascinating. Australia has haunted my imagination for as long as I can remember, and this is one more sighting of the ghost.

[summer]

oh so pretty. lovely clear shot too.