Spent beauty #1
Bozeman, Montana
2013
This new series,
Spent Beauty, is a spin-off of the
Latent Potential series I’ve been working on. When I go out looking for dried grasses and plants that have gone to seed, I keep finding some that don’t have seeds on them but that I like anyway; hence the new collection.
This particular type of grass I’ve never seen before. In fact, I didn’t think it was a single plant at first. It looks like some pine needles got stuck on some kind of more common grass stem. But as far as I could tell they are actually part of the plant. Strangely, there was nothing else like it in the area where I found it; nothing that resembled it even if it didn’t have the strange arrangement of parts. The “needles” or whatever they are seem pretty tightly bound, at least they didn’t come off in the shaking and bumping that occurred in walking with them between where I found them and my studio. How they ended up woven that way must be an interesting story. Too bad I don’t know what it is.]]>
Spent beauty #1
Bozeman, Montana
2013
My gues is that maria is yhe sculptress. I love the geometry.
Maria? Do you mean Maria as in what they call the wind? I always thought it was spelled Mariah, but apparently not (according to Wikipedia anyway). Did you know that Mariah Carey was named after the song from the musical Paint Your Wagon?
I think you have a nice little Epilobium there. Were there some really tiny seeds remaining with tufts of hairs on them? Some Epilobiums are showy (like fireweed), but a lot have pale, inconspicuous flowers, then a long, slender capsule that spits lengthwise to release dozens of little tufted seeds to the wind. Here’s a picture of one that’s not quite so spent: http://botany.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/schoepke/epi_hi_2.jpg
Tim, it sure doesn’t look like the Epilobium in the link you sent nor any photos I saw looking on the internet. But what do I know? I’ve seen some plants with long slender capsules as you described but this one didn’t seem to have that. It certainly didn’t have any evidence of tufted seeds. I think it still belongs to the genus mysterioso.