Hurricane flowers in the rain

It's been raining a lot lately.  This has made it a good summer for the hurricane flowers. These bromeliads, scientific name Billbergia pyramidalis, tend to have their flowers after a storm has come through, and that's how they got their name. Like many other bromeliads, the hurricane flowers produce an inflorescence made up of lots of small flowers, and you can see a few of these in the photo below.

I also went to White City Park today, a nice park in Fort Pierce. I found these air plants there, growing on the limb of an oak tree overhanging a pond full of water lilies. Most of the water lilies had closed up, I guess they open in the morning. I'm not exactly sure of the species name of the air plants, it may be Tillandsia fasciculata. There are a lot of species of Tillandsia around here; Spanish moss and ball moss are both members of Tillandsia. Although these plants might seem like something that would be parasitic, like mistletoe, they actually just use the tree as a place to grow. They don't take its nutrients or water. The air plants get everything they need from rain, air, and dust.

Zebra longwings and Giant swallowtails

Note: This post was written on October 2, but I've been having problems with Blogger so I haven't been able to post until now. 

Today I tried to take some photos of butterflies in flight. Some of the photos came out better than others but they are challenging to photograph. They don't stay in a place where they'll be in focus. I found that it was easiest to choose a high ISO setting, use manual focus, and a fast shutter speed, like 1/500 second. I also used the screen on the back of the camera, instead of the viewfinder. This first photo is one of the best I took today. The other photos depict a giant swallowtail that I found under a banyan tree.

Night Blooming Cereus

Last night, the night blooming cereus bloomed. These are cacti that hang from palm trees, and they're where dragonfruit come from. Usually when ours grow dragonfruit, racoons end up eating them. The fruit is sweet but kind of bland, and they have a very striking appearance. If you buy them in the store, they are expensive.

I decided to take some photos of the flowers because the air was still. They're very large, pretty flowers, but it's kind of pointless to try to take a photo of them if there's wind, as your photo will be blurry, and if you use the flash the white petals can get all overexposed and then your photo looks too bright and too low in contrast. So here's my photo, of the inside of the flower. I used a flashlight to shine light into the flower from the side, and used an 8 second exposure. I used f/25 because I wanted a wide depth of field, so all the parts of the flower would be focused as well as possible.