I have been spending much time lately simply taking in the incredible fragrance of my flowering Rhynchostylis gigantea. The neighbours must think I am weird when I perch myself on the ladder with my head in the blooms! I recently added R. gigantea 'spots' and R. gigantea 'Red' to my collection, although the missus insists that the latter is not red at all... I am still looking for the peach or orange variety.
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| Rhynchostylis gigantea 'alba' |
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| Rhychostylis gigantea 'spots' |
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| Rhynchostylis gigantea 'red' |
While enjoying the rhynchos, I decided to play with some photograph to see how different the flowers might look with ultraviolet photography versus normal light spectrum photography. So, I took a picture of R. gigantea 'spots' with my Olympus stylus TG 860 tough (normal photography; Fig A, and then with my Nikon D3300 18-55 modified to ultraviolet only (UV photography; Fig B, converted to greyscale). It is interesting to note that the blooms reflect UV uniformly, and not differentially between pigments. In other words, the 'spots' don't seem to have any visual significance in the UV spectrum at all.
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| Fig A. Rhynchostylis gigantea 'spots' with the Olympus camera |
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| Fig B. Rhynchostylis gigantea 'spots' UV photograph with the modified Nikon camera |
