Tones of Earth

The fruit of a sycamore tree on a bed of last year’s leaves, all patterns in earth tones.

All trees have fruit, even if that fruit isn’t one we like to eat. You’ll see these little balls covered all over with tiny spikes bearing flowers at the tip hanging on sycamore trees on slender stems in spring, light green with a burnished haze among the bright green leaves. The tiny flowers grow from a core in the center of the ball and are wind-pollinated. Through the summer the spikes disappear into an overall pattern of what look like seeds on the surface but that’s actually the withered flower at the end of the spike formed into a protective ball—the seed is at the base of each spike, hidden inside the ball as it matures. As the leaves fall in autumn the seed balls appear suspended on bare branches like ornaments hanging through the winter. Winter has faded the brown to buff and such a slender stem holding them in mid air weakens and frays and lets go, the ornament falls to the earth under its mother tree to match the leaves around it, all weathered by frost, freeze, wind, ice and snow. All seed eating animals and birds like the seeds and in one way or another, either through the fall, a squirrel or bird pawing or pecking it open or a larger mammal stepping on it, what looks like a solid ball of seeds falls apart into fluff with seeds at the bottom of each cream-colored hair to become a new tree. Individual seeds may settle into the earth where they landed, or an animal or bird eats the coating and deposits the seed where it deposits its leavings, or it floats on wind or water to a new destination and a new sycamore, long-lived, tall and wide and strong enough to stand next to water or on a city street for decades.

On the last day of March I took a quick walk between errands to see if any wildflowers were blooming in the woods on an oddly warm day. I also had a chance to walk barefoot and step into the stream barefoot on the last day of March. I’ll be sharing the other spring flowers I found along with a few interesting artifacts and scenes which I’ll be sharing in the next several days.

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All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, visit my galleries of Photography on Portraits of Animals to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “Custom Prints” for availability and terms. I'll be more than happy to make a print for you.