Tag: Trees
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Shiva is taking a break
Shiva is taking a break They’ve put him under the tree for the time being, until further notice, until they need him again for some procession or festival.He looks magnificent, as tall as he is, with all his usual trappings. If he hadn’t been standing there, I certainly wouldn’t have noticed the truly beautiful and…
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Skeleton at sunrise
Skeleton at sunrise In last week’s post I showed you this dilapidated house from the other side. A very different picture giving a very different impression. This is the same house – and tree – lit up by the early rays of the sun. And this is the sun as it had just risen above…
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Temple tree
Temple tree A banyan tree does not begin its life from a seed in the ground. Its seed needs another tree, a rock or some other structure on which to take root and develop. It is therefore not a parasite, but an epiphyte. If the tree grows on top of another tree, over time the…
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Multiple trunk tree
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…
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Ficus benghalensis
Ficus benghalensis Why is the Indian fig tree, with its distinctive hanging aerial roots, called a banyan? It’s an interesting story, which has nothing to do with its sacred nature. ‘Banya’ appears to be the Gujarati word for ‘trader’. Via Portuguese and later English, the word ‘banyan’ first came to mean Hindu trader in India,…
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Sacred trees
Sacred trees Banyan trees are often regarded as sacred. I think this is because they are truly awe-inspiring, just like the gods themselves. When we find ourselves face to face with an extraordinary tree – a towering sequoia, an imposing baobab, a gnarled olive tree, a branching banyan tree – we soon fall silent. They…
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Natura Artis Magistra
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…
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Ελαιώνας
Ελαιώνας Elaionas is the Greek word for olive grove. On the island of Aegina there is a genuine, centuries-old olive grove with trees that are 500 years old and one specimen that is even more than 1,500 years old. What astonishing creatures! The fact that they have reached such a venerable age, with all those…
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Still waters …
Still waters … run deep. That is indeed the impression we get when we look at them from the right perspective, as we did in last week’s post when we looked down upon Diamond Lake. But here, standing on the overgrown bank of the lake, we see nothing but a reflection in the still water.…
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Composition
Composition Every photo is, of course, a composition, marked by the choice of what to include within the four sides of the picture and what to leave out. Light and colour also come into play. The photographer may or may not be fully aware of these factors, but they do play their part. Here it was…
καιρός remembered 