Fall-Winter 2007
Up close with milkweed
Who among us has not puckered our lips and with a puff of breath sent milkweed seeds flying on their parachutes? But have you ever pondered the orderly process that takes place? The seeds are arranged so that only a few at a time are released, author and naturalist Donald W. Stokes informs us in “A Guide to Nature in Winter,” published by Little, Brown and Co., in 1976. “A few seeds separate from the others while remaining attached to the top of the pod by their filaments… If the seeds just fell, most of them would land at the base of the parent plant and have to compete with each other.”
Only after the seed’s parachute is trapped in branches or other twigs does the seed separate and falls to the ground.
Photographer Lee Harrison has captured this ordinary event and given it an extraordinary perspective in this series of photographs of common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca.
Copyright © 2007 Lee Harrison. All rights reserved.