While hiking and photographing woodland wildflowers yesterday, I found a “lifer” wildflower … one I have often hoped to run across, but until this trip, had never seen. I’m talking about Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis). Here are a few of my favorite images of the Bloodroot wildflowers:
Here are some “young” plants, emerging from the leaf litter (notice the plant’s leaf, wrapped around the emerging stem):
Once up and flower open, here is the beauty of this wildflower:
After finding this new wildflower, I began reading about it. Now I understand why I might have not seen one before … the Bloodroot has only one flower per plant, and each flower lasts for only one day (although the plant continues to live/grow for some time)! The Bloodroot’s flower has from 8 to 16 petals of uneven size and length descend to a horizontal position, forming a flower that grows to a little over an inch in diameter.
As seen in some of the images above, when the flower is emerging, it’s leaf is wrapped around the flower’s stem. It then unfurls into a horizontal leaf, about 8″ wide. And the roots are horizontal, fleshy tubers; they are fingerlike, with a senna-red juice. Native Americans used the roots for a dye, thus the name “Bloodroot”.
Photographic Equipment Used:
- Canon 5D Mark 3 body
- Canon EF 180mm, f/3.5 macro lens
- Bogen 3221 tripod, with Giottos ballhead
- ISO 800 (a bit windy)
- Aperture f/3.5
- Shutter 1/640 sec. to 1/8000 sec. (lighting fluctuated, causing shutter speed to change)