Winter Botany
Winter botany presents an opportunity and many challenges. For me the opportunity is having snow as a background. A uniform background focuses attention on the plant parts in the image. Among the challenges are the fact that in most cases not all the parts remain. In particular the parts of plant of greatest interest to most insects and humans, flowers, rarely remain. People don’t all see (look for) the same things in identifying individuals, so saying something is distinct does not always get agreement, but Eryngium yuccifolium has many features that persist through winter that make it distinctive to everyone. While Helianthus is a difficult genus to identify species, a height of >9 feet is only achieved by H. grosseserratus. Height is important information in identifying many species. While the range of color in winter is not as large, subtle differences among brown are often telltale. A few plants remain green. Many times in winter one knows what the species is because one has been at the place in many times of the year. Woody vegetation leaf scars are only visible when leaves have fallen. Those are my thoughts on winter botany.
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