(Source: alysejoelleblog, via interspeciesinternational)
(Source: all-things-bright-and-beyootiful, via birdsinmybeard)
Purple coneflower (Rudbeckia purpurea) on Flickr.
A Flora of North America by William P.C. Barton.
Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1823.
Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers — passageways — for genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation to generation. Genes don’t think about what constitutes good or evil. They don’t care whether we are happy or unhappy. We’re just a means to an end for them. The only thing they think about is what is most efficient for them.
—The dowager, 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (via in-wub)
William Sharp, one of the first chromolithographic printers in the U.S., created these extraordinary illustrations for the large folio Victoria Regia (1854) by John Fisk Allen. Allen, a well-known horticulturalist, cultivated a specimen of the rare, huge (up to 8 feet in diameter), fast-growing (up to an inch an hour!) water lily, native to the Amazon. After months of careful tending, the plant—named in honor of the recently-crowned Queen Victoria—blossomed on the evening of July 21, 1853. Sharp’s depictions of this exotic wonder—in various stages of bloom—were masterpieces and elevated the then-nascent art of chromolithography to spectacular new heights.
image captions: All images are from a copy of Victoria Regia in our collections. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
(via daddychaser)
(Source: tri-forc3, via such-a-pity)
Quick Stop on Flickr.
Quick Stop
Female Black-chinned Hummingbird
Henderson, Nevada
(via wapiti3)