Today we have some lovely photos of Hawai’ian flowers by Emilio d’Alise. His notes are indented, but there are no IDs (explanation below). Readers are welcome to identify any plants they know. I don’t know which ones are native and which are not.
While living in Hawaiʻi, I photographed a lot of stuff. Occasionally I paired my D7000 with the great Nikon 105mm f/2.8 VR Macro lens for flower shooting sessions around Kona or at the Kona Old Airport park. These are some of those photos.
There was a time when I would have researched the names of each and every flower . . . that time has passed. Now, I just enjoy them. If anyone really must know each and every one, HERE is a link to Hawai’ian flowers, but know that in the past I’ve not had a tremendous amount of luck with any but the most common varieties. Plus, some are imported species and not native to the islands, and only seen in gardens and the grounds of resorts or condominium complexes.
Beautiful photos Emilio! Thanks! Lovely on a cold, dark winter’s day in Minnesota!
Thank you.
It’s also a cold, windy, snowy day in Southern Illinois.
Such beautiful flowers. And that black bee is beautiful, too. (Sorry about the accidental alliteration).
Thank you. As Mark says below, it’s a carpenter bee:
https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/uhmg/downloads/Bee_and_Pollinator_Carpenter.pdf
They loved the flowering cacti and you can see one completely inside the flower in the fifth photo. They go pretty deep, to the point that you don’t know they’re in there.
Cool! I like the framing too. I think the bee is a carpenter bee. They are impressively big.
Thank you, and yes, carpenter bee. They seemed larger in Hawaiʻi than they do in the mainland, but then everything seems to grow larger there, being the tropics and all. they’re also easier to get close to (or so it was for me).
The framing was done using the ON1 Suite 10 (then, it was called onOne). I used them for a number of years (2018) until they “improved it” so much that it no longer suited my workflow.
When it comes to framing photos, I went through a number of iterations. Currently, I use a very thin black border applied as a batch using Nik Collection’s Color Efex Pro 4.
Mainly, to ‘separate’ photos from the background when I post them on my blog.
First picture is Hibiscus and it may or may not be one of the native species.
Next to last is Plumeria, which is native.
Correct, and you can identify a few more by following the link provided.
Plumeria is not native to Hawaiʻi (and, surprisingly, neither are coconuts). It was introduced in 1860, and only grows in cultivated areas. Meaning, it doesn’t grow in the wild, a big clue to whether a species is native or not. Of course, given enough time, it will be considered “native”.
Side note: the Loulu Palm is the only native palm of Hawaiʻi, all the others having been introduced at one time or another.
Blooming marvellous!
Thank you.
These are so wonderful to see. A delight!
Thank you. I only snapped the photos. Other people cultivated them.
Wow! Thank you for taking these and Jerry for posting them.
Thank you for the kind words.