Photo of the Week

Common Dandelion Puffball
Common Dandelion Puffball
Taraxacum officinale, Asteraceae
Burnaby Mountain Conservation Area,
Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
Nikon D5100, 105 mm f/2.8
May 11, 2014

While I couldn’t see my mother last Sunday I was able to spend some time with our other mother… nature. I spent the day enjoying the sunny weather up on Burnaby Mountain.

I think I was inspired to take this photo with all of the Cosmos talk about the dandelion seed like nature of the ship of the imagination. Though from a strictly botanical sense the puff or pappus at the end of a dandelion “seed” is actually made up of modified petals from the individual ray flowers that make up a dandelion “flower”. Even the dandelion “seed” is not actually a seed but a dry fruit known as an achene; the seed itself is located within. The more you know…

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