Lamprocapnos spectabilis - 21 May 2025

It is difficult to keep track with the modern trend of giving plants new botanical names. That is the case with the plant I used to call Dicentra spectabilis. It grew in our Kerrisdale garden and is growing in my Kits garden. Rosemary liked it because she liked plants that had white flowers.

I believe that it is difficult to combine a plant or flower with a portrait. My portrait of Art Bergmann I think succeeds.

Art Bergman

When I noticed my flowering lamprocapnos I thought of Rosemary and how I miss her and how the common name of “bleeding heart” defines my state of affairs of living in Kits without her.

 I livened up when I decided I was going to scan the flowers. In my scans you will note the bit of the flower that sticks at the bottom. Some creative plantsman must have decided that it represented the bleeding from the heart-shaped upper section.

 I am constantly harping how American photographer Garry Winogrand stated that he took photographs of things and said he did so to find out what things looked like photographed. When I scan plants and particularly now that I am aware that my scanner can get in very close (more so than your average high school microscope of yore) I am surprised as I cannot predict the beauty of these plants up very close.