This week’s photo challenge calls for images of reflections. Like the example shown here, my shots illustrate the topic in both literal and figurative ways.
Riverside Park is Vero Beach’s premiere location for festivals, picnics, and dolphin watching. Walking under the stately live oaks it’s impossible NOT to reflect on nature’s beauty:
Growing as they do from Virginia to southern Florida and westward to the Texas Gulf, live oaks are an ecological and cultural icon of the American Coastal South. Four blocks from the Atlantic in Riverside Park, they are richly shrouded in epiphytic Spanish moss.
Spanish moss (aka Tillandsia usneoides) survives on regular rainfall and high humidity, growing from trees as silvery-gray threadlike masses to 25 ft. long, densely covered by the gray scales which are a means of receiving and holding atmospheric moisture. When water laden, the gray scales glow brilliant white from the sun’s reflection:
The symbiosis of live oaks and Spanish moss inspired many a Southern Indian legend, some sweetly romantic and others….well….not so much! As a final reflection , I’ve included this one from the Florida Memory Project Archives:
For more information about this interesting epiphyte, check out The Beaufort County Library (South Carolina) Spanish Moss Website.
For other bloggers’ reflections on a variety of topics, check out the Zemanta related links below!
Until next time….
🙂 🙂 🙂 .
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13 thoughts on “Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections”
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small house/BIG GARDEN 
Love the photos and the info, especially the legend!
Thanks for the link, really appreciated, MM 🍀
Excellent photographs! Thanks for linking to my post 🙂
Great photos! The Spanish moss was so foreign to me when my family moved to Pensacola from the Chicago area in the mid-70’s, but it became a regular (and almost unnoticed) part of my daily life. I haven’t lived in the south for years — these photos took me back in time! 🙂
Glorious trees and moss and I loved the poem as well, thank you 🙂
Enjoyed the info/links on the love oaks. They are beautiful and Florida needs all the shade it can get.. 🙂 I enjoyed your reflections on this challenge. Loving the header!
*live oaks!!!! I should wake up before I type!!!
For people who are fond of these trees, live oaks are indeed love oaks.
The poem brings to mind an old English song about “maids, when you’re young, never wed an old man.” 🙂 At least she got away in this story—a lot of good-looking Greek girls pursued by gods weren’t so lucky!