Catkin Rosettes
 |
| (This is the jpg - 100kB - is there a perceptable difference?) |
 |
| (This is the png8 - 373kB - is this one that much better?) |
Tiny pieces of birch catkin mulch, or could it be breakfast cereal?
- or maybe a jigsaw puzzle?
We haven't had snow now for several weeks, and the catkin detritus is drifting into piles along the surface of what snow there is, accentuating rises and falls on the ground.
These cross-section exposures of the centers of catkins show the geometric layering of three-lobed nutlet upon nutlet in the catkin, nature's redundancy.
Let them accumulate! In the spring, these piles of organic matter will provide a rooting material for newly-sprouting birch seeds.
These cross-section exposures of the centers of catkins show the geometric layering of three-lobed nutlet upon nutlet in the catkin, nature's redundancy.
Let them accumulate! In the spring, these piles of organic matter will provide a rooting material for newly-sprouting birch seeds.
6 comments:
tea! catkin flower tea for drinking on a cold wintery afternoon with a good book and a kitty beside me on the sofa....
imperceptible difference to me on my tiny screen with crummy capacity perhaps on a giant screen it would be easy to discern the better quality?
Took a second look after your comments with regard to the previous photo's ultra brilliant colors being a Blogger induced difference... the top photo seems a bit blown out or overexposed compared to the second higher quality shot, consequently careful looking shows me also better level of fine detail is visible. Slight shadings and tones, hints of shadows, a clarity and crispness lacking in the first. A casual observer would not notice. A second pass did not reveal it. But knowing the alleged problem, the third try worked a charm. owell
Thanks for checking this out for me - at almost four times the file size, the quality difference between this pair of images doesn't seem to warrant the additional load.
Good to check out these things, however.
Without seeing the color shift and pixelization in yesterday's "adjusted" photo, I would not have worried about it. Now I want to know Blogger's triggers for "adjustment."
Oh, tell me about Catkin Flower Tea!?
Catkin flower tea? NO CLUE -- I TOTALLY MADE THAT UP!!! rotfl It looked a bit like chamomile flower tea, with a cursory glance....
Well I got curious and did a little digging, because I remembered having birch beer as a kid at a historical site or something in New England or Pennsylvania. No mentions of tea from the flowers, but maybe vermicelli from the spring cambium -- a "poverty food" (meaning you are starving otherwise) I would suspect, although perhaps a delicacy or acquired taste?
Anyway. Maude Grieve's A Modern Herbal
is a good sort of compendium source for old time herbal thinking, keeping in mind some of the old cures would not be considered very safe in modern times of course. http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/b/bircom43.html
Post a Comment