Going To Seed

Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum) a perennial herb, native to Eastern North America. It’s decorating the landscape everywhere up here now. Rich pink dots of color can be found in endless places. Charming spring.

Flowers though, in the lower elevations are coming to the end of their lives, slowly becoming seed pods with a fun surprise included in each one. Those pods have fibers inside that begin to coil up, spring-like, as they ripen and dry.

That coiling creates tension inside the pod allowing those spring-loaded seeds to be flung a good distance from the plant.

This is what those spring-loaded seeds were tossed from. This is what is left after the seeds are gone, only an empty capsule left. I think this is something fun to see, making my imagination run wild. It looks like a miniature carousel or a tiny fairy in a ballet performance or any number of other tiny things.

           

Published by

Brenda Clements Jones

Brenda is a certified Virginia Master Naturalist, a Habitat Defender for Shenandoah National Park, and a devoted fan of Mother Nature. She lives in a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Shenandoah National Park, and hikes up to the higher elevations of her mountain often to see what nature is up to. Her constant hiking companion is a camera that captures nature as it unfolds through the seasons. It’s her goal to share the natural world around her through her photographs.

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