Father Pitt

Category: Nature

  • Witch Hazel

    Ozark witch hazel (Hamamelis vernalis) is one of old Pa Pitt’s favorite plantings. It blooms in the dead of winter; it keeps its petals closed until a warmer day comes along, and then it unfurls its little red flowers and floods its surroundings with perfume. But if you bring in a few twigs and put them in a vase, you don’t have to wait for a warm day. The flowers will unfurl within hours, and then in a day or two the perfume will start filling your house. You can have a fresh bouquet from the garden in the middle of January.

    The twiggy bouquets make an interesting display, and for some reason it occurred to Father Pitt that he should attempt to photograph one in the manner of the 1930s.

  • Snow

    Snow on coneflower seedheads

    Above: Snow on seedheads of Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea).

    Below: Snow on seedheads of Garlic Chives (Allium tuberosum).

    Snow on garlic chives seedheads

  • Sweetgum Fruits

    Sweetgum fruits

    The unmistakable dried seedpods of Liquidambar styriciflua on the ground in the West Park arboretum. Sweetgum is not native to our area—its range ends a little south of us—but it is so widely planted that it is one of our more common trees.

  • Snow on a Fence

    A wooden fence with snow accumulating on it, rendered as a nineteenth-century engraving. Several steps went into this rendition—compensating for lens distortion, adjusting perspective, converting the picture to black-and-white, enhancing details two different ways, and finally the Colored Engraving filter by Lyle Kroll and David Tschumperlé, which is one of (at last count) 574 different filters and effects available in the G’MIC image-processing framework.

  • Winter Sunset

    Sunset

  • Sycamore in Winter

    Sycamore tree in winter

    The American sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) is notable for its peeling bark, which comes off in sheets, leaving gleaming white underneath.

    Sycamore bark

    There are three species of Platanus in the United States, but P. occidentalis is the one that grows in the East, suggesting that some botanist was disoriented in the most literal possible sense.

  • Bittersweet

    Like many invasive species, Oriental Bittersweet came here because it was beautiful. Its berries make a lively splash of color in the winter, especially against a backdrop of evergreens. This vine was growing at the edge of the woods in Bethel Park.

  • Shadow of a Tree

  • Seeds of Clematis terniflora

    Autumn Clematis (Clematis terniflora) produces great quantities of seeds, which accounts for the fact that we see it more and more in the wild, and that it has been tagged as an invasive species in some places. The seeds themselves are some of the most beautiful constructions in the world of seeds—they look like a school of tropical fish.

    Clematis terniflora seeds

  • Yellow