buttonbush

[asakiyume]

The Ashley reservoir is now one of my go-to places to take people when they visit. I took my old college friend and her husband there, and learned that the water-loving plant that I had thought looked very mangrove-y is buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), which grows up and down the Atlantic coast and as far inland as the Mississippi, and is indeed a species in the mangrove biome!

Buttonbush



Yesterday I took osprey_archer there (and we read aloud to each other--so much fun), and lo and behold, the buttonbush was in bloom! I didn't have a camera, so she obliged me with a photo:

Buttonbush in flower, by osprey_archer



The flowers look like how pollen looks under a scanning electron microscope:

Buttonbush flowers....



Pollen, much magnified:



(source)

Or, um... like an influenza virus...



(source)

It smells nice, though, and bees and butterflies love it. AS DO I.

Comments

[amaebi]

*swoon*

[asakiyume]

^_^

[cmcmck]

Pretties! :o)

[asakiyume]

Yes!

[queenoftheskies]

That is so cool. I'd love to see one in person!

The spikes remind me a little bit of century plant flowers. Bees LOVE those like crazy.

[asakiyume]

There's actually a portion of California where they grow, apparently, but I think it's north of where you are.

[pameladean]

So improbable! I've seen it blooming once in southern Minnesota, but it's not common here. Pollinators were all over it and so were some odonates, hunting the tinier pollinators. The photographer I was with spent about an hour in the bush's vicinity.

P.

[asakiyume]

Yes, the pollinators were loving it here, too, and I read online that it's a good thing to have for a butterfly garden. We have swampy land behind us... I wonder if there's any buttonbush back there.

[osprey_archer]

Yes! They do look exactly like pollen! I'm not sure if that was in my mind when we were looking at them, but they look like something that ought to be visible only through a microscope.

[asakiyume]

Right? They had that "I'm tiny; you're seeing me magnified" look. I'm just amazed that this design is apparently one that pops up at such different sizes. Makes me wonder if there are galaxies out there that have this same structure.

[sovay]

Buttonbush flowers....

Those are great!

I like that you have an eye for the mangrove.

[asakiyume]

I like it too! I felt so vindicated. When I first saw them, I pointed them out to Wakanomori and said, "Don't they seem like mangroves? Maybe they're northern mangroves." AND THEY ARE. Sort of. Minus fun mangrove stuff like prop roots and ability to filter salt (though they do tolerate salty water and salt spray, so... go buttonbush!)

[missroserose]

It's one of my favorite things about the universe that matter organizes itself according to similar principles whether on a microscopic or the macro-est of macroscopic scales. "That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing." Everything is connected; sometimes I wonder if we're all just quarks going about our daily business, and our entire galaxy nothing but a molecule in another being's world.

[asakiyume]

sometimes I wonder if we're all just quarks going about our daily business, and our entire galaxy nothing but a molecule in another being's world. --seems eminently possible, and I like the idea.

What's your quote from?

[missroserose]

Confession: I stole it from Wiktionary, which tells me it is the earliest known record of the principle of "as above, so below". Apparently it's from the Hermetic Corpus, the 2nd and 3rd century AD texts that form the basis of Hermeticism. And now I have a Wikipedia article to read. :)

[asakiyume]

There's no shame in that as a source! And yeah; I don't know anything about Hermeticism either, but in China, too, they had the idea of cosmic correspondence and "as above, so below."

"This is elaborated especially by the Han Confucians and Sung Neo-Confucians through a specific understanding of a correspondence between virtues practiced by humans as having their natural counterpart in cosmic processes. For example, in his “Treatise on Humaneness” Chu Hsi (1130–1200) speaks of the moral qualities of the mind of Heaven and Earth as four, namely, origination, flourish, advantage, and firmness. These correspond to the four moral qualities of humans, namely, humaneness, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom. The cosmological and the human virtues are seen as part of one dynamic process of transformation in the universe. In Han Confucian thought these virtues are coordinated with seasons, directions, and colors." (Source)

[missroserose]

Ooo. I hadn't thought about it in terms of chosen behavior, but that's a fascinating concept! Probably links in with the eternal struggle of order versus chaos, structure versus entropy, etc.

(I feel like I'm simultaneously not smart enough and not high enough to be having this conversation, haha.)

[asakiyume]

Nah, you're plenty smart enough. The characteristics they mention seem pretty random to me, and the linking with human traits kind of arbitrary. Maybe they were just making it up as they went along!

[gale_storm]

...or like Pinhead from Clive Barker films. o.O

But, yeah, buttonbush flowers do look like lots of other things, too!

[asakiyume]

Hahaha, well, Pinhead's head wasn't so completely spherical, but yeah.

[umadoshi]

and is indeed a species in the mangrove biome!

This isn't a plant I know, and it looks (well, the buttonbush looks) really neat. ^_^

(Also, I just subscribed to you, so this is doubling as a "hello!" comment.)

[asakiyume]

I just subscribed to you too and felt an upwelling of warmth and friendliness because you are in Halifax, and my husband and I travelled to Nova Scotia earlier this summer and enjoyed it thoroughly, including our time in Halifax (we stayed in a college dorm that night!) Also, my first-ever LJ friend (excluding family and IRL friends) was from Halifax.

Buttonbush **is** really neat. ... Also interesting that people looked at the flowers and thought buttons; I probably would have called it snowball bush.

[umadoshi]

Oh, yay! I'm glad you enjoyed your visit here. ^_^ This is generally an excellent time of year for coming to Nova Scotia, so good call.