Spiny Stem Detail

(for those of you who are interested in seeing my San Francisco trip images, I have uploaded 10 pictures in this batch [138 in the past couple of weeks]. Thanks everyone for your comments and your visits to my photostream! I hope you enjoy the show!) (Oh, and yes, I know there are really too many pictures to be uploading at one time but I have too many images I want to put into my Flickr stream so it just can't be helped!)

One of the places Laura and I walked to was the Arboretum, which is a wonderful, enormous collection of plants from all over the world. This is a close-up image of a huge, unidentified plant with enormous 2-feet wide dark-green leaves. The stems and veins of every leaf are covered with spines! It bears strange fruit covered with red berries, and I'll have some pictures in the next few days. This plant was totally fascinating to me and I'd never seen anything like it before.

By the way, for those of you who may not know, there is a very fun, free Flickr competition site which you might like to take part in. It's called FlickrDuel and features dozens of ongoing competitions, or duels every day. You can enter your pictures into many different categories and vote on contests too. It's another way to enjoy your photography!

This image was taken during my trip to San Francisco during September 12-15, 2011.