The turn of hydrangea preziosa’s leaves seems more a blush of spring than fall, the bloom’s exuberant confetti toss exciting their fandango pink tips.
It is an arousal as much of light as color, its tip-to-base progression reminding me that this is not the sensual surge of May, but October's melancholy ebb of green.
(You can find some of my Cuba posts on my travel blog, El Viajero Contento.)
It’s November 11, and I’m heading a couple of hours southwest of Havana to Artemisa Province and the tiny spa/resort village of Soroa. It will be a relief to claw my way out of the gritty, claustrophobic street-canyons of Old Town Havana for some peace and fresh air.
I hook up with my Spanish school compañeros, Meg, Suzanne and Charles, in the tiny plaza in front of La Floridita—reputedly Hemingway’s bar of choice whenever he craved a daiquiri´. There we meet our driver for the day, Lazaro, along with his pride and joy, his nicely restored 1956 Chevy Bel Air.
(Lazaro finished medical school, but hasn’t yet found a job. What’s more, at a doctor’s salary of 1,060 Cuban national pesos—about $40 usd—a month, he didn’t seem to mind driving tourists around for $75 a day!)
Turning north off the Autopista Este-Oeste (Route 4), we wind our way up a long, narrow valley to El Salto Park, where we pick up the climbing trail up to El Mirador (Overlook) de Soroa. It’s a hot, sweaty climb, but the rewards along the way—flora, fauna and even the rocks’ and trees’ amazing forms, colors and patterns—are well worth the effort.
After the beautiful half-hour trek we’re looking out over a broad sweep of the lush hills and plains of Pinar del Rio—and down on the backs of soaring vultures.
Once we’re back down, Meg and Suzanne decide to pay the three-peso (CUC) admission to cool off under the wispy, 20-meter salto (waterfall) while I play with some of the amazing touch-me-not plants (Mimosa Pudica) that furl up when brushed with a finger.
Some orchids are so playful and animated as to conjure characters from a fairy tale.
LABOR OF LOVE
From El Salto we head down the road to the Orquideario Soroa, the largest botanical gardens in Cuba—and, some claim, the second biggest orchid gardens in the world. Built by Spanish lawyer Tomás Felipe Camacho in 1943 in memory of his wife and daughter, the lovely eight-acre grounds feature some 700 orchid species, including many endemic plants. Though Camacho died in 1960, the Orquideario, now supported by the University of Pinar del Río, continues to thrive.
(Admission to the Orquideario costs three pesos (CUC) for a person—plus an additional peso for a camera!)
Our knowledgable guide explains the origins, preferences and significance of each specimen—though I must say I’m distracted by the sheer visual impact of such gorgeous flowers, some so playful and animated in form as to conjure characters from a fairy tale.
Unfortunately, not all orchids bloom at the same time. Alas, Cuba’s splendid national flower, the mariposa (butterfly) orchid, (Hedychium Coronarium), with its intoxicating, gardenia-like fragrance, is among the absentees. But the other amazing orchids of Soroa fill in nicely and will forever decorate the sultry alcoves of my happy place.
Tiny closed-fist buds festoon hydrangea’s translucent, pale-green stems. From bottom up they pop open in precious, fertile, ivory florets. Their stamens outstretch expectantly. Here, here, look at me!
But someone else has stolen the show. The much larger, neuter flowers, like crisp, white-linen butterflies, flutter 'round, perhaps overselling to the thirsty those scant nectar sips below.
(I spotted this spectacular compound flower of the “pee gee” hydrangea – hydrangea paniculata grandiflora – on my neighborhood walk this morning.)
Like tiny, luminous squids, columbine buds jet through swirling seas of deep green. Catching sight of me, the shy ones demur, blushing pink on palest pistachio green.
An impetuous few turn to face me, then pop open—hoping, I presume, that I am a large, poorly-dressed bee.
I am not, but am drawn nonetheless, to those stunning, bleached-tip amethyst stars; those nestling fans of milk white, cupped to capture dewdrops; those fountains of delicious, lemon-yellow stamens.
Is it possible to be seduced like this, only to be blown away?
My grandfather on my mother's side taught me a lot about Nature. Some of it he showed me—like how to flood night crawlers out of the lawn for fishing bait. Other things he just let me learn for myself.
Like most German immigrants of that generation, he believed that kids, once given the basic necessities of love, health and safety, should pretty much entertain themselves. So I spent lots of time just hanging out in their back yard and garden, exploring, playing with whatever gifts Nature provided that day.
The petals lifted and spread, revealing an explosion of golden stamens inside.
PHOTO: Tim McCormack
One of my favorite discoveries was the peony bush just outside the back door. The first thing I noticed was the succulent, sensual flower buds. The hard spheres with their tightly-wrapped petals-to-be reminded me of the way Grandpa's cigars were wrapped, in thin phyllo layers.
Each bud glistened with a sticky nectar, which explained why there were always ants on them. They didn't seem to hurt the bush and, in fact, may have protected it from other invaders or helped in some way to stimulate its flowering.
That unfurling was a glorious sight. Not quite fast enough to see their movement, the petals lifted and spread, revealing an explosion of golden stamens inside.
Magnolia, like azalea, rhododendron and camellia, is a flowering plant I've always associated with the south. Not Minnesota. But clever horticulturalists keep coming up with new, hardier varieties, bowing ever-farther north the lines on those growing zone maps gardeners refer to when looking for stuff that will survive their winters.
Zone-four-hardy magnolias first caught my eye because they produce their creamy, slightly lop-eared flowers before their leaves. I'd never seen that before, and I wondered why they do it.
While its rivals worked on foliation, Magnolia's flowers stole the show.
It is an ancient genus, some members of its broader family dating from about 95 million years ago according to fossil records. That means they existed before bees showed up in Earth's stew of life. So perhaps that was the plant's first incentive to be creative, having to figure out how to attract beetles and other walking, crawling insects to pollinate it.
One way it gained a competitive edge over other plants was to pour all its spring energy into its flowers. This way, while its rivals worked on foliation, Magnolia's flowers stole the show. And to a bug, if one tree is sprinkled with pretty little flowers here and there between its leaves, and another looks like one gigantic flower, where are you going to go?
So, to this, the first blooming tree I've seen this long-overdue spring, thank you for that ancient ambition...and for luring this walking critter into the blushing center of your exuberant beauty!
I just came across these white pine flowers. I'm sure I've seen them before, but today I saw them as if for the first time. What will you see that way today?
True to its name, this sunflower pulses with light, its tousled petals like solar
flares erupting from the seething, seeding core.
Look closely and you'll see flowers within the flower—tiny star-shaped florets surrounding the maturing seeds.
They're all arranged in one of Nature's most sublime patterns, a spiral lattice, so precise in contrast to the careless abandon of the petals, to the raspy, gangly stalk.
What an amazing gift to the eye—and spirit—this sunny early September day!
MORE ON SUNFLOWER'S SEED HEAD PATTERN(From Wikimedia) – Generally, each floret and seed is oriented toward the next by approximately the golden angle, 137.5°, producing a pattern of interconnecting spirals, where the number of left spirals and the number of right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers. Typically, there are 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other; on a very large sunflower there could be 89 in one direction and 144 in the other. This pattern produces the most efficient packing of seeds within the flower head.
I've always loved morning glories. The way they greet each new day with all their being, expending their most joyous color early, fading in afternoon's heat, then closing down, passing their lifeblood of light to other buds whose day is tomorrow.
I've marveled at that one continuous parasol petal, a fabric of such gossamer translucence that it must be lit from within.
And then there's that breathtaking color—blue's my favorite, a clearer, truer blue than that of any bloom.
But this evening I stop and appreciate the plant's evening glory. Here, in one
gaze, are both its coming and going, evidence that one's not simply the inverse
of the other.
No, morning glory unfurls radially, like a twirled umbrella, but curls up another way, rolling in and over itself like water down a round hole. It will not open again.
The irony's not lost on this wonderer that, so unlike me, this moment's all about past and future. I'm glad that, come morning, now will once again unfurl.
This exuberant plant, just down the stairs from our villa, caught my eye this morning. For those succulent, dewy-puffball ovules; for pointed petals that seem to have just pierced their way out; for the frosty shroud wrapping each cluster of flowers.
But what struck me most of all was the format, this four-shot, time-lapse glimpse of the passage from bud to blossom—perfect but for that last reluctant bloom.
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Turning north off the Autopista Este-Oeste (Route 4), we wind our way up a long, narrow valley to El Salto Park, where we pick up the climbing trail up to El Mirador (Overlook) de Soroa. It’s a hot, sweaty climb, but the rewards along the way—flora, fauna and even the rocks’ and trees’ amazing forms, colors and patterns—are well worth the effort.
MORE ON SUNFLOWER'S SEED HEAD PATTERN (From Wikimedia) – Generally, each floret and seed is oriented toward the next by approximately the golden angle, 137.5°, producing a pattern of interconnecting spirals, where the number of left spirals and the number of right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers. Typically, there are 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other; on a very large sunflower there could be 89 in one direction and 144 in the other. This pattern produces the most efficient packing of seeds within the flower head.
