Virginia bluebells

Saturday
I spent an interesting morning at church, attending a Women of Sycamore Speaker event, featuring Karen Forgus, Senior Vice President of Business Operations for the Cincinnati Reds Baseball team. She talked about her faith journey - how God has guided her life by closing some doors and opening others, even though those open doors have initially sometimes been a little scarey. After lunch we went out biking on the bike trail. The weather was again rather on the cool side, even though the sun was shining, and it was quite breezy, making our return a bit of a slog as we were facing into the wind much of the time. I took several shots along our route, but my favorite was the Virginia bluebells. They are not of the same genus or family as English bluebells. Their scientific name is Mertensia virginica - the generic name honoring Franz Karl Mertens, a German botanist (1764-1831) who was a noted collector of plants; the species name refers to Virginia, where the plant was first identified.
Virginia bluebells form buds that are pink in color due to the anthocyanin (from the Greek anthos meaning flower and kyanos meaning blue) or colored cell sap that they contain. When the flower is ready for pollination, it increases its alkalinity to change the red pigmentation into blue pigmentation, a color that is much more attractive to pollinators. When the flower is pollinated and seed formation begins, it falls to the ground so that subsequent pollinators will only find those that still require their ministrations.

One year ago: Dogwood