Eastern Painted Turtle at Kenilworth Gardens

On one of our visits to Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, there was a crowd around one of the ponds looking at – not lotuses or water lilies – but a turtle. I think a child had spotted it first but then everyone around looked too. It was surprising how difficult it was to see it in the pond. It was a rather small one and it was sitting in a puddle of water on a lily pad.

It seems more interested in the bees that were visiting a nearby flower than it was the people at the edge pf the pond.

I took enough pictures to identify it as a young Eastern Painted Turtle when I got home. On other visits we saw other turtles but they were in the water and not very photogenic. Maybe it was the season. We are past the time when the turtles need to sun on logs to get warm!

Lotuses at Kenilworth Gardens

The lotuses at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens are in bloom in June and July each year. We’ve visited three times so far this year…and the lotuses were the most numerous and largest flowers of the place. They grow in shallow ponds and range in color from white to darker pink. The leaves are lived out of the water on stalks; the leaves are large and round with veins that radiate from the center.

The stalks that end in buds, flowers, or seed pods rise above the leave layer. The ponds contain many stages of lotus development during this season. Eventually – only the pods will remain.

I’ve organized some pictures to show the development toward seed pods….starting with buds and newly opened flowers. Dragon flies often alight on the tips of the buds – a good perch for them because of the small diameter and relative stability of the stalk in the breeze compared to the stalks with full flowers.

Then the flower is fully open and insects are frequent visitors. As long as the central portion is yellow – the flower has not yet been pollinated.

The flowers follow the sun. These are my favorite images of the flowers…when they glow with the sunlight through their petals.

Eventually the flower has been pollinated and the center part turns green and the rest of the flower begins to fall apart. This flower grew up into the lowest branches of a bald cypress.

The petals fall off and the seed pod is all that remains. The pods start to mature. They dry out as the seeds mature but none of them are at that stage yet this year. The petals last a little longer if they fall onto leaves rather than into the water but they decay very rapidly even on the leaves.

Most of the time the leaves are above the water forming shallow bowls that undulate in the breeze but there are exceptions. If they are on the water surface – they often have large beads of water that last much longer than dew on a summer day. They reminded me of glass pebbles used with flower arrangements or a form of abstract art.

Kenilworth Water Lilies

The two dominate plants at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens during June and July are the water lilies and the lotuses. The sign for the visitor center has a water lily design. The flowers rest at almost the same level as the leaves very near the water surface while the lotuses are above the water – the leaves being a layer that flutters below the flowers that are higher still. I like photographing water lilies – particularly ones that have a lot of color and the background is dark enough to set off the color.

I always wonder what causes the plants to grow only in part of a pond. Perhaps it has to do with water depth.

During our visit in late June there were quite a few geese in one of the ponds that was filled completely with water lilies. They moved through the heavy foliage. They just swim through the foliage and the plants close behind the big birds. I zoomed in (series below) to get a closer look at the geese and noticed that some were juveniles – just beginning to get their adult markings.

As usual – I looked particularly to find flowers that be being visited by bees. Do you think these two bees are the same kind of bee? The lighting makes it hard to tell.

Dragonflies at Kenilworth Gardens

Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens in June and July is my favorite place to practice photographing dragonflies. We’ve been twice so far this year and seen at least three different kinds. There are the ones that are powder blue with green eyes – their wings almost clear.

There are darker ones – that look almost black….and their eyes are glossy black.

Last but not least, are the ones with black and white markings on their wings. There were not as many specimens of this particular kind so I only got two pictures.

All of the swoop among the lotus flowers and buds – alighting long enough for photographers. I captured all the above pictures with my Canon PowerShot SX710 HS…. attached to a monopod. I wanted to capture some of them dragging their abdomens in the water laying eggs…but didn’t see any so far. There were some that were defending territory; there was some noisy mid-air collisions!

Spent Lotus Flowers

We are making weekly jaunts to Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens since the later part of June. The lotuses and water lilies are in bloom during this time. It’s a good place for photography projects. One of my experiments the last time we went was to capture recently jettisoned flower parts on the big round leaves. I liked the colors – white, yellow, green…and occasional tinge of pink – and the curves. The first on I photographed still had water droplets left from the rain during the night.

The petals don’t last long once they fall. This one was a little past its prime but I liked the curves at the attachment end of the petals and the undulation of the leaf.

Sometimes they curve back onto themselves. The edges furthest from the attachment end of these petals have a tinge of pink…and the veins of the leaf under them seem to be radiating from the petal-as-sculpture.

Sometimes other parts of the flower spill onto the leaves while the larger petals slide down into the water below.

This leave held almost an entire flower with the petals turned in different ways. The pink edge shows on one of them. The veins of the leaf underneath don’t look as straight as when seen from the top.

I wondered how the flower parts came to be arranged. These seem neatly stacked!

I have a series of posts planned with images from the aquatic gardens...so stay tuned for lotuses, dragon flies, water lilies, and other things observed at this special place.