Closeups of Familiars

One thing I like about nature photography is the surprises that appear on the monitor screen. Not until just before uploading did I notice how the ray flowers are opening in a progressive fashion. Somehow I imagined that they all pop at once.

On most of my lake walks I pass by a row of white pines and so notice the development of yearly growth. Here is the very beginning of five radial buds surrounding a central bud. These will extend out over the season to form another year of pine needle covered branches, the needles in packets of five.

White Pine Cone Ideas

How little information needs to be conveyed in order to recognize an object? Familiarity must play an important part.

Squinting on the first photo gives results similar to the second. Would that very little detail be enough?

Or how about an inversion? This might be a starting point for an etching...

White Pine

I'm getting in a bit of sketching with White Pine. On the final day of torrential rains, I came home to find this pine cone on my doorstep, just begging to be sketched.

I tried a pine cone a few months ago and had a lot of trouble--too busy into counting and figuring... This time I lightly penciled in a rough outline and then began simply placing in shapes. Starting from the top and working across, everything fit nicely (and quite unconsciously) into my predefined outline.

This little piece is safe in my sketchbook dedicated to the white pine project.

Tomorrow it's back to the Gothic characters with an ambitious plan to wrap up the second set! :-) I have printed guideline sheets to ease the process. And, I printed out Katharine's lesson pages--it's so much easier for me to work from a printout, rather than the LCD screen.

White Pine Seasonal Growth

I enjoy walking on the soft carpets of fallen white pine needles during my lake walks. I notice that the dropping needles are from the previous year's growth.


In early spring, buds like these extend out into needle covered branches.


It appears that the best case habit is for five branches around a central branch. Sometimes there might only be a couple of side branches. I thought that perhaps some branches didn't make it due to weather or pest damage. Then I noticed that this year's bud structures for next year's growth are sometimes formed with less that a full complement of buds.


This is such a fascinating time of year! The fall foliage is delightful but observing nature's preparations for next year's growth is way over the top. Here are Swamp Maple buds readied up for next spring.

Eastern White Pine

The Eastern White Pine, Pinus Strobus, is so common around the lake that it's easy to gloss it over. You know how it is, to look towards the unusual while the inherent beauty and complexity of the common goes unnoticed. In fact, this post began as combined with the Red Pine, but that's now for another day.

Here's what I think is a second year cone. I didn't know that cones take two years to mature!


Here's bud growth from over a week ago.


And this was from yesterday.


I include the shot below to illustrate how those five little bud branches above become next year's branches that each host their own batch of five bud branches. And, each batch of needles is in groups of five.