Turks Cap Lilies

I found a small group (4 plants) of Turks Cap Lilies growing along the Towpath Trail in the CVNP late last week. The shooting conditions were marginal and I was hoping to get another chance at them yesterday evening. I went out and found that all of the flowers had been stripped off the plants.

Anyone else finding these lilies in their area? So far these are the only ones I've seen in my wanderings.

D300, Sigma 180 macro, 1/4 sec @ f/8, tripod, polarizer

Bummer. This would have been a great shot.

I've not seen any here, Chuck, but there hasn't been much of a chance for wandering on trails either. Can you bring out a few more details in the stamens? I like the composition here.

Have you tried OARDC in Wooster? That isn't far from you. Of course their lillies are not wild.

Wonderful photographic opportunities there.

Excellent. Great light and separation from the background. I haven't been out for a number of weeks now, so I can't really say if they're out around my neck of the woods. Good stuff Chuck!

I saw something similar to this in darlington sc. earlier this week,,some were not bloomed

and they looked like small bugles.

I saw something like this when I was wandering around in the C&O NHP along the Potomac River in Maryland last week.

We have Turk's caps near Ely. Pity they were gone when you returned, Chuck. Deer like to eat a lot of the wildflowers. Good nutrition in the blooms. Or it could of course have been human marauders. I'd photographed a clump of six stemless (pink) ladyslippers along a boreal forest trail near a campground earlier this summer, and when I returned a couple days later with excursion clients so they could photograph them, someone had cut off all six right at the bases.

But now that you've got the locations down, sounds like a good trip for next season.

I like how you composed the image, too.

"I'd photographed a clump of six stemless (pink) ladyslippers along a boreal forest trail near a campground earlier this summer, and when I returned a couple days later with excursion clients so they could photograph them, someone had cut off all six right at the bases."

Incidents such as that really make me mad on some level. I don't know why certain people demonstrate a complete lack of respect for nature (the reasons are probably numerous), but it seems to happen way more often than it should. Even in "protected" natural areas such as state parks, I've seen so much vandalism and total disregard of various sorts that it blows my mind. Sorry to go off...but you touched a nerve there! I'm glad to hear that I'm not alone in noticing such things.

Yeah, we were pretty upset about it. There were plenty of other stemless ladyslippers nearby, but that was a stellar clump, so we were both disappointed at losing the chance to photograph it and outraged that someone thought they could bring "nature" home by removing the flowers and stalks.

Couldn't agree more with you Joel and Steve. I started out this post with a vitriolic rant against people who don't respect nature (especially in a national park). We lost power in the middle of my rant due to a major thunderstorm. By the time I got back to it, I had cooled off a bit. Guess it was nature's way of allowing me to choose my words more carefully.