Last week, I took a short early morning trip out to my family prairie. As the sun came up, its light was caught beautifully by the fuzzy seeds of various prairie plants, particularly stiff goldenrod (Solidago rigida) and dotted gayfeather (Liatris punctata).
A stiff goldenrod seed is ready to fall from a seedhead. Helzer prairie, near Stockham, Nebraska.
Species with fuzzy parachute-style seeds trade distance for time. Their seeds can be carried far from the plant, giving them a chance to colonize new areas. However, because the seeds have to be light weight, they tend to have short shelf-lives, and can’t survive for very long – they will either germinate quickly or die. Bulkier seeds often have the ability to survive for years in the ground and then germinate when favorable conditions appear – but they don’t typically travel very far from their parent plant. Life is a series of tradeoffs!
More goldenrod seeds.
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And more. In this photo, the contrast between the brightness of the seeds and the shadows behind the plant were such that the camera couldn’t capture it all, resulting in a black background behind the correctly-exposed seeds.
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Even after the petals (and even the seeds) fall, goldenrod flowers are still very attractive.
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Dotted gayfeather also has short-lived, high-flying seeds. However, once a new plant is established, it puts down deep roots (literally – as deep as 10-15 feet).
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More dotted gayfeather seeds.
The Prairie Ecologist 
Those are lovely shots! What a lovely way to spend the morning :D
If you don’t mind can you share the details of camera settings and lens you used to get these. I have been trying to get macro shots, but have not been very successful so far.
Krithya, the photos were all taken with a 105mm Nikon macro lens on a Nikon D300s camera.. with a tripod and remote trigger cord. I used a high aperture number for depth of field on most of them and a shutter speed just fast enough to keep the blur from a slight wind from affecting the sharpness. If you click on “photos” under the banner photo at the top of the blog home page, you can see a list of equipment I use and some other photo information. Hope that’s helpful!
Thanks for the information Chris! I still do not own that kind of equipment, but I would definitely like to try some shots like these some time :)
If you use Chrome browser here is a cool extension for viewing EXIF data of pictures which I frequently use to peek at Chris’s settings :)
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/exif-viewer/mmbhfeiddhndihdjeganjggkmjapkffm
You can see the exposure settings like this:
Exposure Time: 1/40
F Number: f / 29
ISO Speed Ratings: 500
Oooh that’s a really cool extension. I will not have to bother the photographers now! Thanks Mike :)
How gorgeous!
Awesome photo of the seeds! I didn’t know about the relation between their weight and how long they are viable. Last fall, I planted some prairie larkspur, the native kind of cleome, a penstemon of some kind and a couple other kinds of seeds that did not come up this spring. Do you think they may yet come up next spring? I thought maybe I planted them before I should have and the birds ate them or something.
Sue, I’d definitely give them another year. It’s hard to say, of course, but it’s not uncommon for us to see it take several years for prairie plants to show up in prairie seedings. Also, the larkspur and penstemon will likely be small rosettes the first year they come up and bloom the second year.
Chris – these are some of my favorite photos of yours! Maybe I’m just unlucky, but whenever I take my macro in my prairie there is always a breeze which makes things difficult.
I’ve haven’t seen any of my gayfeathers show up in my 2010 seeded prairie. My guess is drill seeding could have planted them too deep. Like Chris mentioned above, I’m still hoping them suddenly show up.
Great pictures! Brown goldenrod flowers are beautiful, but the way you took this pictures, it makes them more attractive.
I love the first and third. Great job and lovely blog :)
Oh my goodness, that’s incredible!
Interesting how much life is interconnected.