The moist forest floor was sprinkled with trilliums. The trillium is a springtime flower based on three: three leaves, three sepals, three petals. It enriches an early seasonal walk through the woods.
Not far from the trilliums was a vigorous anthill. This might seem irrelevant for the trilliums, but it turns out that there is a close relationship between ants and trilliums: it is the ants that spread the trillium seeds.
First, a picture of a trillium showing its threesomeness.
Nearby was an anthill of a thatch-mound nesting species in the Formica rufa group.
Attached to a trillium seed is a fleshy structure that ants like to eat. Ants collect the trillium seeds, take them back to the nest, eat the parts they like, and discard the seeds. The ants thereby spread the seeds. Here is a closer view of some ants of that colony.
Finally, another shot of an ant-mediated trillium.
Trompe-l’oeil
Kate Bridger is a local artist and author. Her recent article in the Nelson Star discussed trompe-l’oeil—the ancient art of painting a building with such realism that the eye is tricked into believing the structure has three-dimensional features that it does not. She gave a nice overview of the technique and offered examples, her local one being Reo’s Video at 607 Front Street.
Now, I am a fan of trompe-l’oeil and have long admired what I had considered Nelson’s only representative: a building at 110 Baker Street housing a dentist’s office. It’s not that I was unfamiliar with Reo’s, but had always assumed that its decor was chosen more to amuse the eye than to trick it.
Reo’s Video certainly has a delightfully evocative paint job, but the design is purposely cartoonesque. It is unlikely to trick anyone into imagining that its painted features are real. Yet, it does amuse.
There is a local building with faux structures that is much more likely to fly under the radar. The Dental Building at 110 Baker not only has fake windows mixed in with its real ones, but even real windows with fake features such as lintels. Indeed, this building also tricks the eye with its painted anchor plates, pillars, and arcades.
Now, if there there is a nicer example of trompe-l’oeil in Nelson, I don’t know of it. Of course, some building may have been so cleverly disguised that I have yet to spot it for what it is. Does anyone know of other regonal examples?