Right Before Your Eyes: One of Mother Nature's Most Amazing Flowers

                I’m taking a little vacation time, so I won’t be able to talk to you next week. I’ll miss that. But I’ll be back the week after that with, I’m sure, many adventures to relate.

                But before I go away, I thought I’d tell you about something I ran into this week that is completely not what you’d expect in a million years. But then Mother Nature kind of specializes in the unexpected, doesn’t she?

                High on the cool and beautiful mountains of China and Japan, the plant life bobs rhythmically in a serene breeze. The air is cool and quiet. By your feet, broad, green leaves cradle little bunches of wee white flowers. They’re very pretty, but not really extraordinary in any way. They’ve got a bell of snow white petals and, at their center, a little green bead with a circle of bright yellow extensions growing all around it. They’re charming and beautiful.

                You start to turn away. Much more to explore, here.

                Cool droplets begin to drip down your cheeks and the air suddenly feels clean and fresh. It’s an early summer shower. Those little flowers will enjoy a drink. You glance instinctively down at them and then freeze. You stare, your mouth wide open.

                The very ordinary has just become breath-taking.

                As the delicate white petals become drenched with fresh rainwater, their pure white color begins to fade and then disappear.

                By the time the shower subsides, those tiny little white flowers are as clear as shimmering crystal!

                You’ve stumbled upon Diphylleia grayi. At least that’s what the scientists call them. They more often called Skeleton Flowers because of the way you can see all their insides when they go transparent like that. They truly are some of Mother Nature’s most amazing little flowers.

                So how do they do that? What makes these little flowers go transparent? It’s a very unusual talent, you must agree.


                You just never can tell what amazing thing Mother Nature is going to dream up next!

                Well, that summer shower was refreshing and lovely, but it almost seems to be letting up a bit. You seem to be feeling fewer and fewer raindrops on your cheeks. You look up at the sky. The heavy, dark clouds are moving along towards the horizon and taking their showers with them, leaving behind a batch of deep, blue sky. They sun begins to pour down warmly upon your head. You hear the gentle drip, drip of rain water rolling off leaves and landing in puddles forming on the ground. Drip, drip. Everything even smells fresher.

                After a moment you turn back around for one last look at your crystal clear Skeleton Flowers. And once again you gape. The sun has dried them out and, as they always do, the flowers have reverted to their snowy white. They are like new. There is no hint of their invisibility.

                You just never know what Mother Nature is going to dream up next, do you?

 
File:Diphylleia grayi Sankayou in Ninomine hakusan 2009-9-6-25.jpg
               

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