What is it Wednesday: August 25, 2021

 

Can you identify what's in this photo?

 

 

Each Wednesday morning 

on Camp Lutherlyn's Facebook page

 the Lutherlyn Environmental Education Program posts a photo. 

 

 

Readers have all morning and afternoon 

to make their best guess about what the photo is. 

 

Around 6 pm LEEP provides the answer and a brief explanation.

 

 

Each week's What is it Wednesday post 

will also be posted on the Nature of Lutherlyn blog, 

 after it is posted on Facebook,

sometimes with additional bonus information. 

 

In addition to bringing you current editions of What is it Wednesday 

on the Nature of Lutherlyn blog, 

we will be reposting old editions,

creating a What is it Wednesday archive. 

 

This photo was posted as a What is it Wednesday on

August 25, 2021. 

 

 

 

And the answer is....

These are the flowers of ironweed, a meadow wildflower that grows up to 8 feet tall.

The name refers to the toughness of its stem, and it is a member of the aster family. Butterflies, bees, and other pollinators love it. Their intense purple color is striking, and looks especially pretty in a field mixed with goldenrod, which also blooms in late summer.

Author Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, has a beautiful and insightful reflection on the connection between asters and goldenrod, purple and yellow, in her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. She points out that purple and yellow are reciprocal colors, perceived by the same receptors in the eye. This is true for both the eyes of humans and the eyes of bees. 

"This doesn’t explain why I perceive them as beautiful, but it does explain why that combination gets my undivided attention. I asked my artist friends about the power of purple and gold, and they sent me right to the color wheel: these two are complementary colors, as different in nature as could be. In composing a palette, putting them together makes each more vivid; just a touch of one will bring out the other. Purple and yellow are a reciprocal pair.

"The real beholder whose eye they hope to catch is a bee bent on pollination. As it turns out, golden rod and asters appear very similarly to bee eyes and human eyes. Their striking contrast when they grow together makes them the most attractive target in the whole meadow. Growing together, both receive more pollinator visits than they would if they were growing alone."

"It’s a testable hypothesis; it’s a question of science, a question of art, and a question of beauty. Why are they beautiful together? It is a phenomenon simultaneously material and spiritual, for which we need all wavelengths of knowledge.

… its wisdom is that the beauty of one is illuminated by the radiance of the other. Science and art, matter and spirit, indigenous knowledge and Western science— can they be goldenrod and asters for each other?"

For a full excerpt of the essay, go to https://commons.bluemountaincenter.org/goldenrod-and-asters-my-life-with-plants/ . 

And for more on how you can visit Lutherlyn to engage both the material and the spiritual, visit www.Lutherlyn.com . 

Like and follow Camp Lutherlyn on Facebook, to see What is it Wednesday posts when they come out and have the opportunity to share your guesses in the comments!