white oak bud, beltsville, md

Just a white oak leaf bud from several years ago. Botanists, at some point, realized that many plants go through a period of time where they have no leaves. So, being clever (and having no leaves to look at) they have devised alternative strategies to identifying plants using things like buds, leaf scars, patterns of pith, color of bark, and so forth. You can do this too, even if you never did well in school and have a criminal record, its not that difficult. And, this winter do this: gather several species of twigs, bring them into a bar, and upon sitting next to someone you would like to have a conversation with pull out a twig and say: "this buds for you." Natural history has lubricated many a friendship Citizen. Photography Information: Canon Mark II 5D, Zerene Stacker, Stackshot Sled, 65mm Canon MP-E 1-5X macro lens, Twin Macro Flash in Styrofoam Cooler, F5.0, ISO 100, Shutter Speed 200 USGSBIML Photoshopping Technique: Note that we now have added using the burn tool at 50% opacity set to shadows to clean up the halos that bleed into the black background from "hot" color sections of the picture.