Banana flower

Banana flower, originally uploaded by Telzey.

In a break between storms last week, I ran into the back yard to shoot a banana flower which had just opened -- something I've been trying to do for 5 years. This beauty is just under 30 inches across! As the golden florettes develop into bananas, the petals turn a deep maroon, almost black, before falling off -- then the next set of petals open. One flower like this will produce at least 15 bunches of bananas -- resulting in lots of banana bread ;-)

This isn't a photomanipulation. All I did was crop the image and add a vignette. The magic was all in the incredible light between rain storms.