Flowers from the Hood with a Fake Botanist

A completely non-professional commentary on flowers that I have photographed.

All of the flowers in this post were found in my mother-in-law's yard. She currently has more than what I've captured here, but these were the ones that I decided to photograph at the time. All commentary is probably completely wrong, so please do not expect to learn anything useful about flowers. (And maybe keep any children away from this post so that they have a better chance of growing up smarter.)

Let's begin!

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I'm pretty sure this first flower is some sort of rose. They grow on rose bushes that have thorns on their stems. I know a lot about roses and thorns. My grandmother used to have a lot of them planted around her house - particularly around her driveway. She also had a basketball hoop attached to the garage and my brothers and I would play out there all the time. We would often end up in those rose bushes, either from chasing after the loose ball...or from pushing each other into them. So many scratches. Good times.

This rose appears to be red.

Here we have a miniature sunflower. These grow lower to the ground so as not to soak up all of the rays that could go to other flowers. It's an evolutionary trait that allows for better symbiotic relationships with other flowering plants. The more flowers growing around you, the more likely you are to have a bee visit you and spread your pollen. This type of sunflower can survive for millions of years just from growing two feet tall instead of seven.

Below, we have a pink-star azalea. Azaleas are Greek...or maybe Asian? Perhaps both? Wherever they're from, they are quite resilient and their flowers come in a variety of colors. I tried smelling these flowers, but I don't think they have any fragrance. The other possibility is that my nose is broken. I may just be azalea nose-blind.

This one is known as the blush stout azalea. It's self-explanatory, I think.

The next one is a late-afternoon shadow azalea. They prefer to grow in places where sunlight is inconsistent. Science has proven that there is no distinct advantage to flowers that prefer more sunlight to less sunlight. In fact, no sunlight is commonly the best option for plants. (But just to be safe, please leave your plants where they can get some sun. It's extremely rare, but it is possible that I could be wrong.)

Up next is the violet blur. This flower received its name due to the absolute impossibility of taking a clear photo of it. Believe me when I say that I tried too many times. For some reason, evolution has decided that this is the flower's best defense mechanism. Botanists are still trying to figure out how it relates to survival. Some say that the inability to take a good photo prevents people from desiring this flower as decoration in their homes.

There are currently several studies underway looking into this phenomenon.

One of the most amazing flowers in the collection is the red petalis clusterus. There is no rhyme or reason to the shape of this flower. It just really likes its petals and is in a hurry to show them off, sometimes resulting in an asymmetrical and indistinguishable pattern. Although it's not the preferred method of flowering, insects absolutely adore this one. (Especially bees. Those little jerks are selfish and mean. They wouldn't leave me alone, so this is the only picture I took of this flower.)

One of my wife's absolute favorites is the caterpillar creator. This plant and its flowers are responsible for creating 95% of all caterpillars and butterflies on Earth. Every spring, caterpillars will magically appear from the flower's pistils. A few weeks later, the caterpillars morph into butterflies and fly away, never to return to the same plant again.

The caterpillar creator then falls into a deep depression and begins drinking far too much water. It finds itself in a stupor, wonders what it's going to do with its life, then remembers that it can always just create another wave of new caterpillars and watch them grow into beautiful butterflies again. So, the life cycle continues until the plant can no longer reproduce. Then it dies.

Finally, we have the triple-triple. This plant earned its name from an impressive basketball statistic that is known as the "triple-double"...except the flower has one more triple, so it's cooler. Obviously, the triple-triple refers to its petals, which present themselves in three layers of three.

The reason for these three layers of petals in a triangular format is to confuse any animals looking to consume the flower. Such animals will see the geometrical shape and suddenly become intimidated by maths. They will stare at the flower, trying to remember if the triangular shapes are isosceles, obtuse, equilateral, or scalene. Due to the fear of their animal friends asking them to describe the flower in detail and not knowing how to explain it, they usually prefer to go eat the petalis clusterus instead.

Here's a view from directly above. Now you can understand the mental anguish that this flower can cause. Do you think you can figure out these triangles? Good luck!

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That concludes the science lesson for today!

I hope you enjoyed the photos and all of the wonderful accompanying information. If you found this post to be educational...then you too may have failed third grade. I'm hoping that you didn't actually read any of this and just scrolled though the pictures.

In any case - thanks for stopping by!

All photos taken with my iPhone 6S.

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Image courtesy of @mynameisbrian

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