Fishing for Pollinators!

Back at "Ketelsen West" in Tucson where it is deep into late Spring - the "5th Season" careful observers get here, where it is ungodly hot and made comfortable by the lack of humidity! It is supposed to be 108F this Sunday, yet the humidity will likely be somewhere close to 5%, making it entirely comfortable if you are at least out of the sun...

As for local flora, we are nearly to the end of the Saguaro blooming season, so there is little on the bloomin' calendar till the summer rains start another spurt of desert growth in 5 weeks or so. But wouldn't you know, my cereus repandus on the east wall of my house, spurt out 7 buds on 2 plants last week, and I enjoyed 3 consecutive nights of flowers of a couple per night! The photo at left shows a good number of them (click to enlarge image) about 4 or 5 days before start of blooming. By late afternoon you can spot the ones that are going to open that night, finally opening to their full 5 or 6 inch diameter (!) by 10pm or so. Once the sun hits them the next morning, the show is over and they close, either setting fruit or if un-pollinated, drop off in a few days... At right is a photo of the last night of blooming showing the spectacular flowers.



These flowers are so large and deep that they require pollinators with a long tongue or proboscis to be able to reach the nectar. There is a story where evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin predicted the existence of an unknown pollinator that could reach the bottom of a 12" long flower in Madagascar, and it took 130 years to prove his prediction! For these flowers, one need only wait and they will come to you. My favorite hunting technique is in setting up a camera on a tripod, taking flash photos in the dark on the off chance of catching one. It has worked well except rarely do I catch moths in the early May blooming - my suspicion is that they are not active in the pre-monsoon season... Here at left is shown a great photo I took a few years back of an uncurled proboscis of a rustic sphinx moth as it is about to dive in to feed on nectar. How deep does it go? Well, the photos at right (again, from years ago) show how far in they reach, and you can see their effectiveness as pollinators - they must get covered in it! The fact that it was in 3 consecutive photos indicate it fed for at least 90 seconds...



On Wednesday night I set up the gear and started it about 11:30, and awoke about 5:30 to fetch it. At 2 photos per minute, that corresponded to something over 700 photos. Did I catch any moths this time? YES! Exactly 2, their images shown here left and right. The one at left came in at 20 minutes after midnight, and the one at right came in at 3:07 am. Don't know if the flash scared them off, as they only appeared in a single shot each, but I've spent some nights in the May blooming without capturing a singe one, so am ahead of average in May!



And yet, pollination occurred - I can tell by looking at the stigma to see if pollen has been transferred from the anther... With the macro lens plus extension tubes at 5:30 in the morning, sure enough, it appears the stigma had a good coating of pollen as well as "moth feathers". Make sure to click on the image to show the full resolution. This was a 3-frame focus stack to slightly extend the depth of focus of the exposure...

SO success for the May blooming outing - rare indeed from my earlier excursions to catch anything. But it is always fun to try and see what you will catch. You bet I'll be back in the busier August and September blooming season!

August finds AZ Bustin' Out!

I got back from the Midwest last week to find Arizona as green as I've ever seen it! Even flying into the Tucson valley, the mountains were a rare emerald green! Evidently the month of July had been the wettest on record - of course, the rain stopped as soon as I returned! My back yard is usually a bare dirt sort of yard, but I returned to find 2 foot high weeds in desperate need of whacking!


With all the water, many of the cacti here are blooming again, some for the second time. In front of the house I have pair of barrel cacti, both at least 25 years old. They look pretty much identical, but one only blooms in the Spring, the other in the Fall - no confusion there! The normal Fall-blooming one (well, mid-August anyway), was budding heavily with the first flowers - well mixed with the yellow fruits from last year's flowers! The image at left reveals the first flower, well-hidden among the buds about to flower and the fruit from last year, and perhaps before! At right is a close-up of the flower. As with the last post of the Katydid, these images are all focus-stacks, where multiple exposures were combined to extend the range of sharpness. This close-up of the barrel cacti flower was constructed from 28 individual frames!

Since the largest image I can display on the blog is 1600 pixels wide, both the above images were reduced in quality for display. But here at left is a full-resolution of the flower, cropped from the original image. Note how the center part of the flower (stigma?), looks all the world like hot dogs encased in buns!








Out in the back yard, my favorite cacti are the array of Cereus Repandus plants along the east end of the house. One of my favorite monsoon activities is to monitor them as they open and watch for pollinators. Seeing 5" wide Rustic Sphynx moths attack these 6" wide night-blooming flowers is really interesting! However, the problem is that my next adventure (eclipse road trip!) starts in a few days, and while the plants are covered with buds, I'm not sure any of them will open before I need to leave! Fingers crossed there will still be some available to bloom upon my return in a couple weeks!

And almost hidden behind the grill, I remembered my little potted barrel cactus, and I almost missed it even though in full bloom! It's dark red flowers are not particularly conspicuous - I'm not sure I've seen flowers less conspicuous, unless you go with the green cholla cacti flowers! Shown at right they are a quite nice shade, and I see buds for future blooms - I'm just not quite sure what I'll see next time I'm home! Will be glad to give up the 2 foot high weeks though!

The Saguaro!

While we're still enjoying ourselves in Illinois, loving the green of a late Spring, I've still got some catching up to do on "posts to be written"! Most overdue is one on the saguaro cactus, recently flowering in our neighbor Susan's yard...


First, for those non-Tucsonans out there, is pronunciation of saguaro. It is a native American word, so is pronounced differently than spelled. Try this - "sah-wah-roh", that should get you pretty close. Some alternate spellings even help out by using the sahuaro spelling, including some local businesses. But most everyone knows what you are talking about - the iconic cacti that is likely a close second to the Grand canyon in symbolizing the State of Arizona. While the plant is a hardy survivor of the harsh Arizona Summers, it is very sensitive to low temperatures and excessive rainfall. As a result, it is not found outside the borders of the state except perhaps Sonora, Mexico. So yes, all those old-timey western movies that were supposed to have taken place in Texas showing saguaros were all filmed in Arizona, as they will not survive outside the state!





It has been over a month already (time flies!) that I posted this year's first pictures of Susan's saguaro. I wrote an iconic post about it 2 years ago, but have more to add this time around... Note that mostly saguaro blossoms (the Arizona State Flower!) bloom at the top of the main trunk and arms, so usually they are located 20 to 50 feet off the ground (note another pair of Susan's plants at upper left). But fortunately, one of Susan's saguaros suffered some frost damage a few years back, one of the arms drooping to head level, this year making the flowers easily accessible. I already posted some anaglyph images of the new buds in the first post above. The lower branch started blooming in early May, the buds popping open just after sunset and lasting into the morning of the next day. Of course, I was there to document it - these anaglyph (3D) images taken on 9 May - the same morning as the Mercury transit across the sun! Of course, you need the red-blue glasses to view them, red filter on the left...

I also took a number of focus-stacked images as with the close-up macro work, it is difficult to get good depth of focus. Here, several or many images are combined with slightly different focal positions and combined in Photoshop to extend the depth of focus much deeper than normally possible. At left is a 9-frame stack that shows the entire flower. In another setup, an ultra-closeup of the saguaro blossom was framed and 13 images combined for maximum depth of field. In that one, I cropped it down to the full camera resolution to retain full sharpness of the flower. Shown at right, you can see the flower anthers loaded down with pollen grains...


Finally, I took some images for making time-lapse sequences of the flowers opening at night. I was fooled several times, checking the buds at sunset and swearing that none of them were going to open that evening, only to check an hour later and finding them well on their way to open! Finally I set up on some of the buds that were likely candidates and had my fingers crossed they would bloom and I got a couple over several nights that way. I'm also looking out for pollinators, but only found small insects on these flowers. I've heard stories of bats pollinating these at night, but never captured any...





This is likely the last of the saguaro posts of the season as by the time we return to Tucson, I'd not expect much activity. But there will certainly be other topics on which to post!

Still Springtime Cactus Season!

We're receiving a reprieve from an early approach towards 100F here in the desert. In fact, we've enjoyed recent highs in the 70s, which make for some spectacular Spring days! Everyone knows that it won't be long, though... But we're enjoying the moderate temperatures while we can - even the extended weather forecast doesn't include 90s.  The moderate temperatures are extending the cactus flowering season as they aren't in such a hurry to blossom when it is cooler.

It seems I spend a lot of time in my neighbor Susan's front yard. The image at left of her prickly pear appeared over a month ago, and this same plant is featured almost every year as a neat demonstration of focus-stacking, like the image at right - this one from 2 years ago. One of the joys of shooting this particular cactus is that over the years it has grown to about 5 feet in height, so no more groveling on the ground to get a close-up - standing looking through the viewfinder is a nice luxury!

But while the buds have made an annual appearance, I've rarely shown the flowers! They don't last more than a day, and often are wilty-looking by the time I get home in the afternoon, so haven't chased them down often. At left is a shot of nearly the entire bush. Fortunately all the buds don't bloom at once, but at a couple dozen per day, the estimated 200 buds still last over a week. Likely a Santa Rita Prickly Pear, I love the color contrast of the purple-ish pads and bright yellow flowers this time of year. And, of course, you wouldn't be able to get away without a close-up of the flower and buds. Shown at right is a focus-stack showing a few flowers and buds that remain to bloom. This is a 6-frame focus stack, where each frame had a slightly different focus to assure everything was sharp.

But that isn't the only plant holding my attention these days! They also have a few saguaro cacti. I've been at this location for 30 years and I remember these cacti before they had arms! Anyway, this one has seen better days - in the wide view at left, you can see it has lost the top of the main column, and even though the downward-pointing arm is covered with buds, it is mostly hollow and can be seen through from several points. All this damage was brought on by cold temperatures in the teens a few years ago. Many plants died off that winter and even many native plants suffered, including this saguaro. But while it is here presenting flower buds (and soon flowers, I hope!), I'll gladly take photos of it!  The close-up at right is a 7 frame focus-stack. Can't wait for some blooms here - look for some anaglyphs below!


My friend Dick told me about a cactus show and sale a couple weeks ago. I had never been to one and didn't know what to expect, but ended up buying a couple different cacti. They are still in pots - not in the ground yet, but hoping to before it gets too warm as it lessens the attention I've got to pay to them for watering as they get too hot in pots... The three specimens I ended up with are shown at right. The left one was mis-labeled an echino fossil cactus, which I can't find on the Google, so not sure what I've really got here. The middle one is a mammillaria longimamma, with flower bud at right, and the right hand cactus is an oreocereus trollii. Our friend Donna called it "Einstein", but I think it more closely resembles Bernie Sanders!

And because it's my blog, here be anaglyphs! Grab the red/blue 3D glasses and be amazed! Because I just showed the shots of my new cacti from the sale, will show them first. As I normally do, these are put together from a pair of images, taken from slightly different perspectives. When each is viewed with the appropriate eye, your brain interprets them into 3D. For these macro shots, the baseline is quite small - only an inch or less.

At left is my still-unknown "fossil" cactus. I love the surface wrinkles and the spines that threaten to poke you in the eye! And at right, "Bernie's" hair shows up quite nicely in 3D...


Here is the mammillaria longimamma, both when I first brought it home, and 10 days later when it bloomed the other day. The brilliant yellow flower is shockingly different, and with the cool temperatures and partial shade, has opened 3 days in a row! This cactus is supposed to be easy to start new ones - tear off one of the fingers, let it dry a day or two and plant it for an entirely new plant...




And finally, closing up with a couple anaglyphs of Susan's saguaro. I was shooting from a stepladder, estimating what the baseline should be (generally going too large), but the result is very interesting! I hope you enjoy!

More Photo Phocus-Stacking Phun!

After the fun I had with the focus-stacking theme of the last post, I decided more was in order. Of course, there is the Desert Museum, which would be a great choice, but cheapskate that I am, I opted for B&B Cactus Farm on the far-east side of Tucson. While both are about the same drive for me, B&B not only let me gawk and photograph as much as I wanted, the helpful staff pointed me to out-of-the-way places where the early cacti were blooming. Yes, turns out I was a little early - they are saying the peak blooming of the cacti they have will likely be next week - so a warning to the local folks here - next Saturday might be good for a cheap date at B&B!

Hedgehog Cactus, 11 Frame Focus-Stack

Hedgehog Cactus, 8 Frame Focus-Stack

First to attract my attention were several
variety of Hedgehog cacti with their brilliant red and scarlet blooms. Don't forget that the focus-stacking technique I'm working on here are specifically for showing the finest details in close-ups, so most of these might be a more narrow shot.  There are a few single-exposure wide shots, but if you want to see more of the plants themselves, go to the Google, or better yet, go to B&B! Every variety of cacti are different, but the Hedgehog's have the recognizable red-orange flower with the bright green stigma




Robust Hedgehog, 21 Frame Focus-Stack

But just to throw a curve, here is another type of Hedgehog - a "Robust" Hedgehog, according to the tag. Note the markedly different color, though still has the contrasting green stigma.

The focus-stacking technique again, utilizes multiple images shot at different focus settings to extend the zone of sharpness of the image. For instance with this image, when the close edge of the flower was in focus, the rest was necessarily out of focus. There are some minor artifacts, seen just over the near edge of the flower petals, and right around the stigma where the out-of-focus edges in the original image shadowed the details beyond. Photoshop does a good job of putting them together, but it isn't quite perfect... Still, an amazing technique. I'm wondering if the software dedicated to focus-stacking (Zerene, Helicon Focus) would be any better?




Mammillaria rubragrandis, 14 Frame Stack

After the red-end of the spectrum, I was enchanted by other colors - in this case, white with accents! At left is a pincushion cactus with some beautiful white flowers and the palest of pink accents. Labeled Mammillaria rubragrandis, it was a spectacular cactus on its display rack. I felt sorry I didn't take a wider shot, then later found a larger one for sale in the store inside and took the shot at right.







Mammillaria muehlenphfordtii, 14 Frame Stack

Mammillaria rubrograndsis, 17 Frame Stack

And while on the Mammillaria cacti, at
left are some tiny flowers, less than 5-6mm in diameter on a Mammilaria muehlenpfordtii - such a big mouthful for a small cactus! Make sure you click to download the full-size frame to see the details in spines and hairs of the cactus.

Another family member is at right, this time a Mammillaria rubrograndsis. Again, the range in color tints is very striking!




And some colors were more unexpected than others... I know there are some cholla cacti that are about the only plants with green flowers. Too early for them this time of year, but spotted these with brown/tan colors with bright pink stigma. At right is a single wide shot of another plant showing the dark brown flowers.






Golden Barrel, 5 Frame Stack

Nearing the end of my shooting, I headed towards the retail store and spotted a pot nearly 4 feet (1.2 meters) in diameter that held 3 golden cacti that had to be about 18" (.45m) across. Yet they had the most spectacular little yellow flowers. At left is shown the cactus in the pot, and the close-up at right shows the blossoms. Click the image and you can see the yellow petal-tips are brown, making a subtle accent to the flower. Seeing all the dried blossoms, there must be times when it must appear spectacular!




Mount Lemmon Anaglyph - Red/Blue Glasses needed!

Finally, before leaving, I passed through the sales store and found some more of the spectacular cacti and other things for sale. Along with the white pincushion cactus above, I found another, whose flower was bigger than the cactus itself! Shown at left is the Lobivia wrightiana. It is a small cactus - see my thumb in the picture for scale! I couldn't get out of the Cactus Farm without buying something... I ended up getting a couple totem pole columnar cactus babies about 6" high after admiring my neighbor's growing in his yard over the years. Melinda also needed a new pot to transplant her ivy into, and I also got some cactus potting soil. But with all the images I got (almost 300!), I think I still came out ahead...

Oh, and if you thought you could get by without a 3D image, you would be wrong! I was so focused (excuse the pun!) on the focus stacking, I didn't take any 3D of cacti, but as I was headed out, realized as I drove back that there might be a nice one of the Catalina Mountains to the north. We were far enough away to clearly separate the front range from Mount Lemmon itself, so took a few pairs, figuring a couple hundred yards will do it - so grab your red/blue glasses and check out the image at right.

Springtime - With A Vengance!

Yes, we see the calendar - we're a couple days into Spring, but Tucson never really had a Winter! A quick check of the National Weather Service data shows that all Winter, every month had some days over 80F (27C). We've already broken 90F (32C) on 17 February, and the local NBC affiliate has started the contest to name the time the official temperature reaches 100F - grand prize is a $7500 central AC unit! The "normal" date is mid-May, but with 90F broken already 5 weeks ago they are being cautious. And even though it was supposed to be an el Nino winter with above-average rain for us, since the first week of January, we've had under .3" of rain, so we've already taken to occasionally watering the native desert plants to keep them from stressing so soon. So with the higher than normal temps and lack of rain, we didn't get many wildflowers, but the cacti are starting to bloom, seemingly the smallest ones first!


Recently I was reminded to shoot some springtime shots - I was complaining to my bloggin' buddy Ken Spencer on a recent post where his shot of tree buds was mostly out of focus. He should have combined a few frames with slight focus change between them and combine them in Photoshop to "focus stack" and extend the range of sharpness. So I should lead by doing, so here we go... Down at the end of the street, our neighbor Mike has a few potted cacti and has some nice little mammallaria cactus covered with flowers and buds. Since the biggest is less than a cm across (less than 1/2"), time to break out the macro and extension tubes for some ultra-closeups! At left is that 1cm blossom with a 12-frame focus stack, where 12 exposures were combined with slight focus shift between them to keep everything of interest in focus. For comparison, at right is one of the single frames, which were all shot at F/8. Make sure you click on the image to examine the full-size version to see the finest details available. At this magnification, only a narrow range of the flower is in sharp focus - that is why the focus stack is such a powerful technique.


This next one used the same technique on a similar blossom atop the cactus, so the flower was seen more in profile. Again, a dozen frames were combined to make the image - interesting how it takes about that many for these shots... Now someone might ask that instead of taking a dozen shots and spend the 10 minutes on the computer to do the focus stack - can't you just stop the lens down to a smaller aperture to increase the depth of field? Good question and yes, you can! A smaller aperture extends the focus range, but there must be drawbacks - well, yes there is that. With stopping the lens down, the exposure is correspondingly longer. These cacti are pretty sturdy, and since I was shooting with a tripod, there wasn't an issue with using a tenth of a second exposure (at F/32) compared to 1/250 second at F/8 for the others. There is another drawback - at the smallest apertures, the laws of optics fight you and diffraction effects start fuzzing out details again. At right is shown the comparison at full camera resolution, showing the single shot at F/32 with the focus stack at F/8. While the stopped-down exposure does extend the focus range the focus stack wins hands down with incredible sharpness down the pixel scale.


With the mammillaria cactus well-covered, I moved the 40 yards closer to home. My neighbor Susan's prickly pear was forming flower buds - another natural subject. I like the "shooting into the sun" angle, making the needles look almost translucent. While the plant has a few big showy spines, the truly dangerous ones are the multitude of little spines that are hard to spot should you brush against it. On a hike in the wilderness, you nearly need magnifying glass and tweezers to remove most of them. Still, it can be a long-term painful experience! On the right, our Indian Hawthorne in our front planter is almost in full bloom. Interestingly, these plants get almost no direct sunlight, being under the north eave of the house, depends on me for occasional watering, yet has survived for the nearly 30 years I've been in the house. Not really a desert plant, it is likely the constant shade that has allowed it to survive. The flowers are short-lived, but for a couple days are a nice accent to the front of the house. The prickly pear buds were a 9-frame focus stack, the Hawthorn a 12-frame.


While the above pictures would likely have been enough for an early-Spring post, I wanted a little more, so went in search of denizens of the yard. On the Rhus Lancea tree in the back yard, I spotted some aphids and moved in close! These little sap-suckers are small and tough to spot, only about 1mm across. With the maximum 50mm extension tubes on the 100mm macro, the front of the lens was only a couple inches from the little guy. The shot at left is a 12-frame focus stack of a sprig on the tree where the new growth is soft enough for the aphids to take in the sap. I was surprised to only find the one on the higher sprigs (easily accessed without getting down on the ground). After taking this sequence, I looked harder and found a whole herd of aphids being attended by ants. Reading up on the phenomena, it turns out to get enough protein, the aphids take in a huge amount of sap and literally "poop" sugar water, which the ants love. Ants watch over the herd of aphids, moving them to different parts of the plant where there is new growth. Since the ant was so active, a focus stack wasn't going to work, so I went to some effort to get everyone in the same focal plane, and used the flash to freeze the ant's motion. Again, at right is a full-resolution blow-up of the ant watching over the aphids, the left image is a 12-frame stack.


And of course, it wouldn't be a "flora and fauna" post without some 3D images! So get out the red/blue anaglyph images for the following images. Macro shots are a little harder to get good 3D - they are very sensitive to scale, and the baseline between the image pairs are smaller than your eye separation, otherwise the 3D effect gets uncomfortably large and tough to focus. The little mammallaria cactus at the start of the post was a great subject, with only about an inch baseline between images. Shown at left, it is a great stereo shot, but the flower color is close to the glasses filters color and weird shifts occur! The flowers come out a blue/purple - interesting, but totally alien in appearance! So go to the top images in the post and imagine THAT color in the anaglyph at left. At right is the only non-macro shot today. I think it is a mesquite or palo verde tree whose flowering branches would make a good 3D image. It was taken with the kit lens and has a stereo baseline of about your eye separation, so should look pretty natural.

So that is what I've got so far this Spring. I'm keeping an eye out and will continue to see what looks interesting...