Hope

by AnnaJo Vahle

Buy the Original Painting

Price

Not Specified

Dimensions

36.000 x 36.000 x 15.000 inches

Title

Hope

Artist

AnnaJo Vahle

Medium

Painting - Acrylic On Canvas

Description

As I continue to struggle with my health, I thought to do a painting expressing hope. The big strong bold flower head glows against a dark stormy sky. It stands tall and freshly washed by the rain.
What is usually called the flower on a mature sunflower is actually a flower head. This is also known as a composite flower. It is made up of numerous florets (small flowers) crowded together. The outer petal-bearing florets (ray florets) are sterile and can be yellow, red, orange, or other colors. The florets inside the circular head are called disc florets, which mature into seeds.
The flower petals within the sunflower's cluster are always in a spiral pattern. Generally, each floret is oriented toward the next by approximately the golden angle, 137.5 degrees. This produces a pattern of interconnecting spirals, where the number of left spirals and the number or right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers. Typically, there are 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other. On a ver large sunflower there could be 89 in one direction and 144 in the other. This pattern produces the most efficient packing of seeds within the flower head.
A common misconception is that flowering sunflower heads track the Sun across the sky. Although immature flower buds exhibit this behavior, the mature flowering heads poin in a fixed direction throughout the day. This is typically the east. This old misconception was disputed in 1597 by the English botanist, John Gerard. He grew sunflowers in his famous herbal gardon. The uniform alignment of sunflower heads in a field might give some people the false impression that the flowers are tracking the sun.
The uniform alignment results from heliotropism in an earlier development stage. This is the bud stage, before the appearance of flower heads. The buds are heliotropic until the end of the bud stage, and finally face East. Their heliotropic motion is a circadian rhthym, synchronized by the sun. This continues if the sun disappears on cloudy days. If a sunflower plant in the bud stage is rotated 180 degrees, the bud will be turning away from the sun for a few days, as resynchronization by the sun takes time. The hellioptropic motion of the bud is performed by the pulvinus. The pulvinus is the flexible segment just below the bud. This is due to reversible changes in turgor pressure, which occurs without growth.

2/6/24...1st place in CONSCIOUSNESS contest

Uploaded

March 12th, 2014

Statistics

Viewed 2,767 Times  -  Last Visitor from New York, NY on 04/22/2024 at 10:32 AM

Colors

Embed

Share

Sales Sheet

Tags