Senna hayesiana in bloom
Yesterday Steven Alexander of Tropical Biodiversity published a beautiful image of a Senna tree in flower. It was incentive enough for me to go look at our own Senna, Senna hayesiana, which has been in bloom since August.
The pre-dawn light and my camera settings make the flowers look a brighter yellow than they are. Imagine a paler shade. If you have Steven’s image up for comparison, the color of the Panama flowers are somewhere between the two images.
This particular Senna is among the few trees in our area that are in bloom this time of year, and because they tend to grow at the edge of woods, their color really stands out against the various shades of green.
Or, for that matter, against the brown of a rock wall or the blurry brown of a Lab in motion.
The flowers are pollinated by insects. There’s a Senna hayesiana behind our bodega, near our compost bins. If the tree is in bloom when I empty the compost into the bin, I inevitably hear the buzzzzzz of bees. This morning I saw a bumblebee nearly half as large as the flower itself, but of course, I had a compost container in my hand rather than my camera.
I do have a picture from three years ago of a bee at work on the flower, but I’m putting it after the break because the color of the flower is so jarringly different from the colors in today’s images. (Camera differences, ambient light conditions, among other variables – I’m not knowledgeable enough with photo editing software to make color corrections.)
You’ll see the bee poised at the end of the green, curved pistil, the female reproductive structure.
