Life is Tenacious: Tiny Ocean Flowers
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Life is Tenacious -- Ishigaki, Okinawa, Japan -- Copyright 2009 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 60 mm — 1/500 sec, f/7.1, ISO 800 — map & image datanearby photos
Life is Tenacious

The whole “plant growing in the middle of nothingness” thing has been well and truly done, including by me, but the picture above, of a plant growing on barren rocks, takes on a bit more drama when you take into account its location...

If the embedded Google Map is working properly, it's showing a location in the ocean a hundred yards from shore.

This was from the second day of our trip to Ishigaki Island in the far south of Japan.

The picture above was one of the last I took before my polarization filter inexplicably* fell off my camera and into the East China Sea.

More in the next post.

* for definitions of “inexplicably” meaning “I wasn't paying enough attention”.

Continued here...


All 3 comments so far, oldest first...

The plant seems to be Hedyotis biflora.

According to Walker’s Flora of Okinawa and the Southern Ryukyu Islands, the local name is sonare-mugura, and sonare is ‘a contraction of iso-nare, from iso, beach, seashore or strand; and nare, a plant shaped by strong one-sided wind, referring to its seeming habit of shaping [itself] to conditions in its characteristic exposed habitat’. Just as in your photograph.

— comment by Peter in Wales on May 18th, 2009 at 6:46pm JST (14 years, 11 months ago) comment permalink

Wow! Great comment, Peter. I might have observed that it appeared to be some kind of Daphne or something. Glad I didn’t. Jeff, have you other photos showing more of the area around the plant, but a little less wide than the satellite view?

— comment by Grandma Friedl, Ohio, USA on May 18th, 2009 at 8:30pm JST (14 years, 11 months ago) comment permalink

“before my polarization filter inexplicably* fell off my camera and into the East China Sea”

Sure, right. Looking for an excuse to upgrade, perhaps?

— comment by Marcina, USA on May 18th, 2009 at 9:27pm JST (14 years, 11 months ago) comment permalink
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