Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: Achyrachaena mollis

I am constantly surprised at the amazing sights I find on our property, and this is one of them, which I was delighted to find this morning! This is a top-down view of a flower called a "Blow-Wife", and the orange bits around the outside are its blossom petals. The odd inner parts are tightly closed "parachutes" of the seeds. When this flower is pollinated and the seeds inside form, the sepals will fold back and an enormous seed ball of glimmering silver "snowflakes" will be exposed. It's amazing to see. For more pictures showing the "snowflakes", click on the side view image below! John Harrigan is a British film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and occultist. He is the founder and Artistic Director of FoolishPeople and co-founder of the Weaponized Imprint. Harrigan's work centres around the creation of film, ritual theatre and immersive events which aim to raise a numinous experience within the witness. He founded FoolishPeople in 1989, taking its name from The Fool major arcana of the tarot. Wikipedia: John Harrington Explored on Flickr on May 8, 2013. Highest position #346.

Here is a side view of this unusual flower. It's in full bloom, believe it or not! It only opens up after pollination, when the seed ball is ready! Please see the pictures below to view the "snowflake" seed parachutes!

Why is this flower called a "Blow-wives"? I looked for quite a while, but never did find the reasoning behind the name, but it certainly makes my husband laugh! :D (However, I did find out that it's called "Blow-wives" in singular or plural) Aside from their peculiar name, these flowers are extremely cool, and believe it or not, the image above is NOT the flower! It's the seed head! Although I missed the blossoms, I got pictures last year which are shown below. When these flowers go into seed stage, they create seed heads that look like shimmering snowflakes cut from fish scales! Incredibly beautiful, they have a metallic sheen to them which seems unreal! Blow-wives are native to the Pacific Northwest, and are found from southern Oregon to Baja, California. This unique flower is the only species in its genus, but is in the world-wide family of the aster, which has over 20,000 species. Blow-wives are very common in their habitat and may become an invasive weed, due to thier long-traveling airborne seeds and easy establishment in any terrain. If you would like to know more about this flower, Wiki has a small source here: Wiki: Blow-wives (Achyrachaena)