May 16,2011--Tulip Poplar

When I got out to the car yesterday, tulip poplar flowers were littering the ground.  Picked one twig up, dropped it into coffee mug on windowsill, and photographed it (first photo). This morning I looked at that photo and decided it didn't capture the beauty of the flowers, so I tried again. The second photo, which shows how the flowers look when they are backlit, is prettier, but it's obviously staged. No matter how you use them, tulip poplar flowers are as beautiful as any flower in the perennial garden, though. Reminds me that, according to Andrea Wulf,  when the tulip poplar first bloomed in the garden of the Early of Peterborough,  people came from "from far and near... to admire it's beauty." (It's a North American tree that had been re-introduced to Britain, after becoming extinct there, in the mid 1600s.) Ah, the native trees we take for granted!