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Plum Tree
Snowy blossom and a Comma...
When I photographed, wrote about and posted my "Early Morning Blossom" weblog entry I didn't know the type of fruit nor tree I was describing... the article was more to do with photography, and seeing, rather than botany. There had been a ground frost that morning, following a cloudless night, so after the photo-outing I stayed indoors with the comfort of a log fire to cheer me. But by mid-afternoon the temperature had risen and I was out on the terrace, shirt off to feel the warmth on my skin, trying to solve a tough-rated Sudoku mentally... that is, without noting down the numerical possibilities, only the certainties, in each blank square as I progressed.
Distracted by the difficulty of the latter I took a mental break and noticed there were an unusual number of butterflies and bees on the warm breeze... my eyes followed the erratic flight of one particularly striking Comma as it fluttered between the still largely bare shrubs and trees in the orchard. Trees bare, that is, apart from a couple covered in a carpet of blossom. Although we had stayed at the same property the previous Winter and early Spring, those trees had not been in flower then and I hadn't been so aware of them this time around until now. What made them so visually different over the past couple of days was that they looked to be covered in snow... the clumps of blossom being so thick on the branches.
And my eyes followed a butterfly... there is something very attractive about this particular member of the Vanessid family, polygonia c-album, it's tattered-looking wings almost looking as if it has been attacked by a bird or dragged through a hedge backwards. However, the dull undersides of the wings make a perfect camouflage when the adult butterfly hibernates over Winter... it's carefully folded form giving the appearance of a dead leaf.
I watched the Comma settle to feed on the uppermost branch of one tree... and grabbed my camera bag. Alternating between a 300mm AF Nikkor and a manual 500mm Nikkor-Reflex mirror lens mounted on a Nikon D200 I was able to keep track of the subject quite easily - although accurate focus was more difficult. The butterfly had settled in the uppermost branches about 25 feet above the ground. The image above is around half of the captured frame with the 300mm lens (remember that is the equivalent of 450mm on a digital Nikon D200 with a x1.5 crop factor). So half the actual image equates to roughly what a 600mm lens (900mm equivalent on a 35mm film camera) would see.
The Plum - which I will always recognise in future after reading-up on the blossom shown here - has many forms and varieties... my favourite being the Mirabelle, which I have never seen growing in England, but is common in France. It was probably cultivated for European soils by the Romans, from origins in the Anatolia Caucasus. Shakespeare refers to cultivated Plums, Prunes and Damsons... and many gardens of his time must have contained a large variety of those fruits.
His contemporary, Gerard, in his own "Herball" (1597) wrote...
"To write of Plums particularly would require a peculiar volume... Every clymate hath his owne fruite, far different from that of other countries; my selfe have threescore sorts in my garden, and all strange and rare; there be in other places many more common, and yet yearly commeth to our hands others not before knowne."
Plum Blossom Tree
Giclee Print
25 in. x 42 in.
Buy at AllPosters.com
Framed Mounted
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