Bramble Flower.

While the last couple of weeks have been very successful from the domestic point of view, they've not been so good as far as Blip is concerned. A case of too many things to do and not enough days.

Bees are suddenly taking up a lot of my time with me having to manufacture apiary equipment ready for accommodating a possible two more colonies of bees to go with that currently sitting happily at the bottom of our garden (hereafter known as the BOG) with the every present prospect of moving them all to The Lost Garden. The BOG arrangement is very crude, even by my standards but suffices for the present. Now the queen is laying there is a lot of black pollen (presumably from poppies) going into the hive to feed the developing larvae and, while I was searching for this blip, I noticed a single honeybee working cow parsley - a new one to me.

The bramble flower is on the footpath a few hundred yards  from home; I find that every time I take a macro picture I learn something new and interesting. I've been fascinated for a few years about the amount of texture detail that can be found in petals but, on this specimen, they are a little over the top; I can only guess that the flower has only just opened and has not yet developed properly - after all, it takes a butterfly some time for its wings to reach full size when tit emerges from the pupal stage. Also curious is the number of petals; this one has seven, possibly eight petals (it's difficult to tell exactly from the photo) as do most of the other bramble flowers on this stretch of vegetation; belonging to the Rosaceae family one would expect it to have five. Finally, the stigma remind me of the hair of the Greek god Medusa but, despite spending some time looking at it, I have yet to be turned to stone.

I have just posted Wednesday’s Blip of “Stow Kirk.”