Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: purplehead

It's always fun to see if I can focus on tiny insects. Here we have a tiny Sweat Bee on a Harvest Brodiaea blossom! When I saw this picture on my computer, I was delighted to see its fat pants! :D (Full pollen baskets)

Ok, ok, it's actually called a Greater Bee Fly, but it's scientific name is "Bombylius major"...see? The person that named this guy thought it looked like a B-52 Bomber too! :D Actually, they're more like a Black Hawk helicopter because they are masters at hovering perfectly still and maneuvering much like a hummingbird. They are really neat insects and I'm so pleased to get a picture of this one sipping nectar from a Common Brodiaea blossom. It will also be one of my three pictures for the Motion theme at our photography meeting this week! :) The Large Bee Fly is a bee mimic. Females flick eggs towards the entrance of underground bee and wasp nests and the hatching larvae enter the nests and eat the grubs! They are found in most parts of Europe, North America and some parts of Asia. If you would like to know more about these awesome flies, Wiki has a good source of information here: Wiki: Greater Bee Fly (Bombylius major)

The flower count continues!! Since it is now about to become June, I'll rename my set "The Flowers of Spring and Summer"! There seems to be no end to the flowers I'm finding! I predicted I'd find about 100 and I may have already found that number, and we've only gotten to June!! So far I've processed up to #75 and I probably have another 25 flowers that I have yet to process! Craziness!! It is a challenge to take pictures of them all, and I am sure I'll have missed some...there's too much ground to cover and not enough time! :D It's a lot of fun though, and I really do wonder what the final count will be when the flowers are all done for the year! :D The lovely Common Brodiaea pops up all over our property, both in the wooded areas and in our meadows too. It's a common perennial flower, which can be different shades of purple and blue-purple, is found in the western United States and northern Mexico. This flower's bulb, or corm, was an important food source for Native Americans. Sometimes eaten raw, they were usually roasted or boiled for a sweeter flavor. Tribes were careful not to harvest too many and would separate corms they dug up, leaving at least one behind so more would grow the next year. They also planted seeds, which grow easily but because it's a perennial, will not flower for several years. An interesting fact: burned areas seems to cause these plants to burst into life afterwards and are sometimes the first plants to show up in a fire-ravaged area! If you would like to know more about this flower, Wiki has a very nice page here: Common Brodiaea (Dichelostemma capitatum) This image was taken in April, 2012.

(Please scroll down to see three more pictures!) Ookow! Ookow! Ookow! Isn't that fun to say?! :D What a great name for a flower!! (a Native American name) This flower is almost identical to another one I posted a month earlier, called the Common Brodiaea. They grow in the same places, but they grow at different times of the year. The Common Brodiaea blooms in early spring, whereas the Ookow grows in late spring and early summer. I always wondered why this flower had such a long growing season! :D Now I know that it's actually two species! :D The lovely Fork-toothed Ookow pops up all over our property, both in the wooded areas and in our meadows too. It's a common perennial flower, which can be different shades of purple and blue-purple, is found in the western United States and northern Mexico. This flower's bulb, or corm, was an important food source for Native Americans. Sometimes eaten raw, they were usually roasted or boiled for a sweeter flavor. Tribes were careful not to harvest too many and would separate corms they dug up, leaving at least one behind so more would grow the next year. They also planted seeds, which grow easily but because it's a perennial, will not flower for several years. An interesting fact: burned areas seems to cause these plants to burst into life afterwards and are sometimes the first plants to show up in a fire-ravaged area! If you would like to know more about this flower, Wiki has a small source here: Fork-toothed Ookow (Dichelostemma congestum)