Tag: Nature
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Multiple trunk tree
The aerial roots of the banyan tree hang down and when they grow long enough will touch the ground. On that spot itself they may take root in the soil and so continue growing as a semi-independent tree. That’s what we see here, around this banyan in Lucknow. This process can go on and on…
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Ficus benghalensis
Why is the Indian fig tree with its characteristic hanging aerial roots called banyan? That’s an interesting story, which has nothing to do with its sacredness about which I contemplated in last week’s post. Banya seems to be the Gujarati word for merchant. Via the Portuguese and later the English in India the word banyan…
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Blowholes in pancake rocks
The breakers dash against the rocky coast. The water breaks into a natural cave, forces its way into a narrowing tunnel, then finds, under enormous pressure, a way out to the surface through a vertical blowhole … That the sudden blasts of water up in the air appear amidst a landscape of eroded pancake rocks…
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Glacial milk
It can be white, but also grey or turquoise, depending on the mineral composition of the rock that is ground by the glacier on its slow way down. The rock flour collected in the melt water of the glacier is so fine that it remains suspended, giving the water its cloudy (milky) look. Here in…
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Equine reveries
This little member of the horse family seems overwhelmed by the abundance of nature around her. I like to think it’s a she although the photo does not permit us to see and know. Standing stock-still, does she think she’s dreaming or is she closing her eyes behind the curtain of her dark manes, afraid…
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Dissected and compounded
A breast, a breast with arm, a head, a neck, black hairdo … the figure of a woman put together of its constituent parts. The artist has done a decent job, at least for the portion we see in the picture, which was the part of the sculpture most to my liking when I saw it at the…
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Dryads
Are they wounded, these stately wood nymphs with their heavy breasts? The red-lined cuts over the full length of their bodies lead one to suspect this is the case. Maybe the god of thunder and lightning has violated them and left his marks. Many years ago, during a walk on the island of Corsica, I…
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Encounter in the forest
Encounter in the forest Two weeks ago I showed you a photo of nature as art. Here we have a case of art in nature. Art and nature … they often go well together. Two ladies in the forest, facing each other. Their upright, elegant figures in wood with metal dress stand still like the trees.…
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Natura Artis Magistra
With this title I am not aiming at the Zoo in Amsterdam, but at the meaning of the words: nature is the teacher of art. Nature as source of inspiration for the arts. I took the photo just outside the wall of Chisaku-in, a temple in Kyoto. It looks like a nice piece of untouched…
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Ελαιώνας
Eleonas is the Greek word for olive grove. There is a real ancient one on the island of Aegina with trees of 500 and a single one even over 1500 years old. What amazing creatures! Having reached such a respectable age, all twisted and grooved and gnarled and knotty, this is not to be seen as…
καιρός remembered 