Picking Apart Proteas April

Recent batch of Protea flowers picked apart...

One of the hot sunny days this Easter.

The RoseBud Flower shop usually orders Proteas in batches of 10 which provides the right amount of material I need. It takes many hours to pick apart all the individual inner flowers in each of the 10 flowers. 

The flower head once the outer and inner 'bracts' are picked off. (Easiest bit). I then grab this core and rip it off the circular base where the seeds are attached. You can see a couple of fluffy ones still stuck on.

A bunch of inner flower cores. You can see the light pink, white anthers on one end and the dark brown on the other where the seed is. In the second photo you can see the bright pink tips of the 'styles' which are the pollen presenters. A light dusting of yellow pollen.

The base of the inner core of flowers. You can see clearly how it was attached to the circular base on the stem. My work has progressed with this continuous circle arrangement. I slowly began organizing all the pieces of plant material in circular bowls and jars and have mirrored this in my final work. (I will post photos of my final pieces in the next few days).

 Large bowl containing pink outer bracts (outer petals) of the Protea flower and two smaller ones containing the inside material; black bowl, perianths ( that i thread together on top of each other to create a thick long chain that looks like a feather boa) and in the white bowl, sharp styles with the seeds stuck to the ends.

 
                                                       Photos of the chain of perianths. Needle, thread and patience!