Friday, April 23, 2010

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: White Trout Lily

WhiteTroutLily
(Click on image to enlarge)

These flowers are difficult to photograph because their blossoms hang determinedly downward, as if ashamed. I had to put the camera on the ground to get this shot.

Why "trout" lily? In The Secrets of Wildflowers, Jack Sanders offers a few possible reasons: because the mid-April blooming time just about coincides with the opening of trout season; or because the mottled leaves evoke the appearance of some kinds of trout; or perhaps because these flowers often grow near streams where trout live.

But if you don't like that name, there are others: adder's tongue, dogtooth violet, starstriker and scrofula root. Also yellow bastard-lily, but that would apply only to the yellow ones, I suppose.

♦    ♦    ♦

My new not-quite-as-cheap camera just got delivered. It looks extremely complicated and I guess I will be spending this rainy weekend reading the operating manual. I had been planning to smash my current camera to bits with a sledgehammer, but this new one is so big that I may keep the old one around for occasions when I don't mind shooting photos on a horrible cheap camera with a scratched lens that never focuses where I tell it to, but at least it fits in my pocket.

No comments: