Balloon Flower
I planted some balloon flowers several years ago. Though they don't always come back, in general they will in Atlanta at least. Mom has some by her mailbox that have done great and Susan planted some at her house that have come back strong this year. Unfortunately I had some mums and lamb's ear that overtook where I planted my balloon flowers, so they have gone away for the most part. But I got a couple of stalks that came up this year (the mum having obligingly died, and therefore no longer in the way) and I noticed they were a perfect example of why they are called balloon flowers. On the left is one that is puffed up and the other has already burst open. They are also called by their scientific name platycodon (or platycodon grandiflorus) and Chinese bellflower (on wikipedia).
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Comments (4)
I'm glad I didn't wait to take the picture. The one on the left popped open this morning.
Posted by UT | May 29, 2007 1:32 PM
That's a really great shot. You could make a horizontal shot to add to your banner rotations. It would be ok to crop off the star shape but capture the balloon. I'm going to install Gallery on Mac5 so we can all share photos easier... especially Mom.
Posted by Jeb | May 29, 2007 5:26 PM
I don't know if this picture lends itself to a banner photo. The flower is too big and right in the middle. I tried it, but it didn't look that great. Nonetheless, I did take your advice and took new pictures this evening. Eventually I got about the right distance away so that I could see most of one flower (now open) and part of the other. Plus I changed the angle so that the cypress would take up more of the background and the flowers would be mostly on the right. That works better because on the individual entry pages the left side gets cropped out. So you want the good part on the right.
Posted by UT | May 29, 2007 6:06 PM
I sent the original cropped picture to Jeb and he thought it looked fine. So I added it to the rotation. He might be right about this one, but for now both balloon flower pictures will be showing up in the cycle of pictures at the top of the page.
Posted by UT | May 31, 2007 5:27 PM