Although I do love sitting and appreciating the colour and diversity in the flower borders, I also find it fascinating to get up close and see the stamens and pollen which attracts all those wonderful bees, bugs and butterflies to my garden.

So I have been trying to capture some of it with my camera.

Take the Feverfew, with it’s pretty daisy like aspect 

but up close you can see the mass of tiny tubules

 that house the nectar and pollen

And likewise the Cosmos     with their pollen capped flutes

Then there’s the Geberra

which first appear as soft,downy heads

  and then develop their dark centre of dotted with star like stamens

The Rudbeckia  

which also, when seen close up, reveal little fluted tubes with pollen caps.

The Sunflowers

And the rather amazing Ragwort, which, when first opened look like sealed bulbs,  which then open out to allow access to the precious nectar and pollen within

And the Zinnia 

which has many tiny florets which make up   the flower head we normally see

Then we have the awesome Teasel heads

  with their spines    and their cones

which house their tiny florets that blossom out like tiny fountains  in patterns around the heads

Then there are the Allium

 a globe of tiny florets 

And, there are the  masters of the wind, which sing softly as I sit and take in all the beauty of the colour of the flowers… The Grasses

which use the air to deliver their pollen. Tiny wisps with stamens wave in the breezes of the summer and ripen into tiny power packs of seed, which help to feed the birds throughout the Autumn and winter months.