For my graduate research, I studied bees…now for my postdoctoral work, I am studying the pollen that the bees carry. Not as cute? Perhaps. But there is a whole world contained in the pollen grains carried by bees. I thought I’d share some of my first photos, which are rough, but there you go. They’re grain-y.*
*pun intended
Secret Life
Alone with time, he waits for his parents to wake,
A boy growing old at the dining room table,
Pressing into the pages of one of his father’s big books
The flowers he picked all morning
In his mothers’ garden, magnolia, hibiscus,
Azalea, peony, pear, tulip, iris;
Reading in another book their names he knows,
And then the names from their secret lives;
Lives alchemical, nautical, genital;
Names unpronounceable fascicles of italic script;
Secrets botanical
Descriptions could never trace:
Accessory to empire, party to delusions of an afterlife,
Kin to the toothed, mouthed, furred,
Horned, brained. Flowers
Seem to a boy, who doesn’t know any better, like the winged,
The walking, the swimming, and crawling things abstracted
From time, and stilled by inward gazing.
Copying their pictures, replete with diagrams, he finds
In the words for their parts,
The accounts of their histories,
And their scattered pollen,
Something to do with his own fate
And the perfection of all dying things.
And when it’s time, he discovers in the kitchen
The note left for him that says
His parents have gone and will return by noon.
And when it’s time, the dove
Calls from its hiding place
And leaves the morning greener
And the one who hears the dove more alone.
– Li-Young Lee
I like the pollen photos. I know it is difficult working that close.
Thank you! The problem is that we have a light microscope with a camera attachment, and the camera and the microscope focus differently. So it is very challenging to get the grains in focus!
I used one in college. I know what you mean. I was not too successful, but I am sure they are better than those in the 90’s.
Haha, actually the scope was last serviced in 1994!
I was in grad school then!
What did you get your degree in?
architecture
Oh, I should have clarified. I was a bio major also, but got the degree in architecture. I changed majors from being pre-med to architecture.
Oh cool! I wanted to be an architect when I was younger, but biology caught my fancy and never let go.
Bio never let go for me either. I still try to read all I can. Architecture is so different though. Both right brain and left brain skills. You have that ability also with all your creative talents in drawing and storytelling.
Oh, I love things that engage both sides of my brain! Yes, I definitely require some creative outlet for happiness. 🙂 But you are somewhat of a landscape architect, right? Because you do the gardens as well?
By profession, I am a building architect. I do the landscaping because it is more fun working with clients. In architecture it is mostly working with institutional boards and companies.
Wow, that sounds super exciting!
I can see differences between the pollen grains, but still they are mostly round shapes and there must be so many different types. How time consuming is it to identify different species?
Very time consuming! It is far more difficult to get to the species level than bee identification.
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