Anemone flower pollen & flower photographs

Shown here are de Caen variety Anemone flowers and their pollen grown locally in the Hudson Valley of New York at Battenfeld's Anemone Farm in Red Hook NY and sold locally at Adams Fairacre Farms stores. [3]

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According to Battenfeld anemones are native to the Middle Eastern countries but were probably brought back to Europe by Crusaders from the Holy Land. In these photographs of Anemone flowers and pollen we are showing the Battenfeld cultivated variety.

Peterson's Field Guide to Wildflowers [Amazon.com] includes several Anemones including the Wood Anemone, Anemone quinquefolia and the Mountain Anemone, Anemone lancifolia. [4]

The Wood Anemone (Wind Flower) illustrated at left often accompanied by the smaller Rue Anemone are often found as a wildflowers together in New York [7] blooming in April and early May.

We illustrate the WOOD ANEMONE flower photos and its anther and pollen later in this article.

Let's enjoy a series of closer looks at the de Caen Anemone in a sequence of photographs zooming in on the pollen center of this beautiful flower family.

Using the macro close-up facility of a Nikon Coolpix 4500 we've zoomed in on the pollen-producing components of the Anemone, its anthers or pollen filaments.

See MICROSCOPE CAMERA SELECTION

More about these photographic methods can be read
at MICROSCOPE DI GITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

In the stereo microscope a magnified view of anthers from one of our blue-violet Anemones (center) and the greenish anthers from our white Anemone are shown in their form.

Interesting to observe, some of our white anemones had all dark pistil, stamen, anther components while one of our white anemones displayed pale green versions of these components. The latter's anthers are the white-green members of our photograph at left.

The pollen collected from the various Anemone anthers will often show a color hue matching the source anther, provided you don't have a too-heavy hand with stain when preparing the microscope slide mounts.

At the magnification above, also taken using our stereo microscope, we begin to see the point of overlap in magnification range between this device and the low-power 10x objective on our high power forensic microscope images that follow.

The Anemone photographs below were taken using the 10x objective, actually at 120x in our lab microscope.

Below in the next pollen photo you can see strings of pollen grains being released from the plant. I think that the degree to which these pollen grains are adhered in chains and a clump are probably not natural and are an artifact of my rough handling of the anther during mounting.

The Anemone anther and pollen photo at above right in the stereo microscope, and at below left in the high power transmitted light microscope (we added reflected light), were taken of dry-mounted flower components.

But to obtain a decent view of individual pollen grains (beginning at below right) we used several mounting media including Calberla's solution[5] and lactophenol.

Actually water or alcohol can hydrate pollen quite rapidly as well and are suitable for non-permanent slide mounts.

In our Anemone pollen photographs below we have magnified the pollen to 1200x using transmitted light and a lactophenol mountant to avoid over-hydration. This preserved the original shape of the pollen and also allowed us to examine its surface features.

The two photos above and then below illustrate the importance of focusing up and down on small particles to observe their various surface and perimeter properties.

And below we have mounted the same Anemone pollen shown above using Calberla's solution - a formulation intended to rapidly hydrate pollen for close examination.

This treatment provides an excellent view of the pollen cell wall and often internal features, but it may so puff up the pollen grain that its native shape and surface features are lost to view.

At below right you can see our Anemone that ports a pale green center.

Wood Anemone Flower & Leaf Identification Photographs

The Wood Anemone, Anemone quinquefolia [4][7] or in more recent references Anemone nemorosa [8] with common names windflower, thimbleweed, smell fox and helmet flower are shown in our photographs just below is often accompanied by the smaller Rue Anemone found as a wildflowers together in New York blooming in April and early May. [4]These photographs of the wood anemone were taken at the author's home on 24 April 2014.

Above we illustrate a cluster of Wood Anemone flowers covered with morning dew and at below, an individual flower in its position of night-time repose. From this photo you can see why some referred to this as the helmet flower. During the day these flowers may lift and open quite a bit more than shown.

The Wood Anemone (Wind Flower) illustrated here was described by Chester A. Reed, S.B., Mohonk Lake NY in is little book Wildflowers of New York published in 1912. [7]

Below you can see the yellow and green center of the Wood Anemone flower and at above right we illustrate the flower's leaf pattern.

These flowers appear in clusters close to the ground in wooded areas, typically 5-15cm in height and produce a single flower per stem.

At above left you can see the same Wood anemone having opened its petals to the sun. This flower was also photographed 4/24/2013 but was found growing wild in New York's Shawangunk mountains in the Mohonk Preserve (below).

Most of our Wood anemones here were white but a few clusters showed a lovely pink hue. Yellow wood anemone, Anemone ranunculoides, also known as the buttercup anemone not shown here is a similar plant with slightly smaller flowers of rich yellow colouring.[8]

At below left we illustrate the pollen-coated anther from the Wood Anemone.

At above right is a 1200x photograph of the Wood anemone's pollen showing some characteristic features and noting that its pollen is distinctly different from the de Caen Anemone shown earlier in this article.