{"id":470,"date":"2018-04-30T01:36:26","date_gmt":"2018-04-30T00:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artofthewild.co.uk\/blog\/?p=40"},"modified":"2018-04-30T01:36:26","modified_gmt":"2018-04-30T00:36:26","slug":"the-whitebell-vanishes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/?p=470","title":{"rendered":"The Whitebell vanishes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was in a local bluebell wood the other day, trying to find a new way of showing the beauty of these plants. I failed as usual, simply because they are so stunningly beautiful that it’s hard to find an image that does them justice. I particularly like trying to photograph the occasional Whitebell that crops in the midst of the sea of blue – I suppose because they feel a bit like the plucky underdog. The job was made harder by the inclement weather, with dark clouds regularly scudding in front of the sun.<\/p>\n

Then I noticed something odd. When the sun was behind the clouds, I could see the Whitebells clearly in the sea of blue. But when it came out, they seemed to disappear. Often I couldn’t find the flower that I had intended to photograph.<\/p>\n

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I read somewhere years ago that one reason why bluebell woods are so lovely is that the flowers capture a lot on the incoming light, including some of the invisible ultraviolet light, and re-emit it as blue light. In other words, they fluoresce slightly. I have no idea if that is true, but it would perhaps explain my vanishing whitebells. When the sun strikes a patch where both flowers bloom, the white bell shines in the sunlight, but the bluebell shines more because it is not just reflecting the visible light but using a chunk of the UV spectrum as well. If I had the time and the (very expensive) equipment needed, I’d love to analyse the light from the bluebells and see if this theory is true. But it doesn’t matter – all it means is that Bluebell woods look beautiful whether the sun is out or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was in a local bluebell wood the other day, trying to find a new way of showing the beauty of these plants. I failed as usual, simply because they are so stunningly beautiful that it’s hard to find an image that does them justice. I particularly like trying to photograph the occasional Whitebell that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevedeeley.bunchadon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}