Great series!! Wonder if you noticed the pollinium attached to the bee's left hind 'toe' in the third picture? These 'saddle bags' of pollen (I see only one side, perhaps the other has already adhered to a stigma) trap bristles and hairs and claws, then get pulled out and transferred to another blossom. The architecture of each blossom has 5 guides that funnel the bristles into the pollinia traps. Sometimes a small bug gets trapped when they can't pull one out. The mechanism is similar to the WWII mine sweepers draglines, but they cut the anchor chains rather than trapping them. Tarantula-hawk wasps are major pollinators of dry-lands milkweeds, with long bristles on their strong legs.

Hey Bob, I added the FD 200 macro after getting the Sony a7II. I had been using an FD 135 f/2 as my 'macro / close-up' lens on this digital camera (with an FD extension tube). The 200mm has been a great pick-up, but a bit less versatile than the 135mm that was useful for general photography too.

I sold my F1, AE1 and T90 bodies as I became more and more disappointed in the sharp focus of my film work. I can still see 'just fine' when I can see the details for manual focus lenses, but the film cameras were not detailed enough via the view finder. The results of the FD lenses on the Sony have been wonderful, with the 10x zoom in the EVF, and I look forward to a future date of merging both manual focus FD and EF / RF autofocus lenses onto a single high-resolution EOS mirrorless.

The Sony is mostly a platform for using the FD lenses, although for much of 2020, I've also found just the Sony and a FD 24L to be an idea walkaround combo. Shooting just at 24mm for an entire day, no matter what I happen onto, has changed the way I look at things.

Lincoln Park
Chicago, IL
July 2020

Milkweed by Paul Sager, on Flickr


Milkweeds are a family of perennial, flowering plants, named for their latex, a milky substance containing cardiac glycosides termed cardenolides. Most species are toxic to humans and many other species, primarily due to the presence of these cardenolides, although, as with many such plants, there are species that feed upon them (i.e. leaves) and from them (i.e. nectar). The genus contains over 200 species distributed broadly across Africa, North America, and South America.

Milkweed


American milkweeds are an important nectar source for native bees, wasps, and other nectar-seeking insects. Milkweeds are also the larval food source for monarch butterflies.

Milkweed and visitor


Milkweed is a popular plant among gardeners as it attracts butterflies. Milkweed sap can be very irritating to the skin but is also very dangerous if it gets in your eyes. Many peoples of South America and Africa used arrows poisoned with Milkweed sap to fight and hunt more effectively.

Milkweed and visitor


Milkweed is not grown commercially in large scale, but the plant has had many uses throughout human history. Milkweed can be made edible if properly processed. Native Americans used it for everything from a diarrheic, relief from sore throats, it was chewed for swelling and rashes, new mothers that could not produce milk would drink it, it was used to treat colic, it was used to expel tapeworms, it was used to cure snakebite and for a contraceptive.

Milkweed and visitor


Most animals won’t eat it because of the taste rather than the danger of toxins. Animals usually do not eat milkweed unless good forage is scarce.

In 1818, when Abraham Lincoln was 9 years old, his mother, Nancy Hanks, died of milkweed poisoning. Milkweed poisoning was a little-understood malady caused by a plant called "snakeroot" eaten by cows and transmitted through dairy products and meat. Its human victims died in slow agony.

Milkweed and visitor


Images shown in this post use a Canon FD 200mm f/4 macro, a manual focus lens from the 1980s. Using a Metabones FD to E adapter, the lens was mounted to a Sony a7II mirrorless digital body. Although the Sony body features 5-axis image stabilization, the camera / lens were mounted to a tripod via a ball head. The image files were processed using Lightroom v6 and Topaz DeNoise v6.

Milkweed and visitor


Adult monarchs will only lay eggs on milkweed and the plant is the sole food source for monarch caterpillar larvae. The plant also offers protection: caterpillars ingest a toxic steroid from milkweed that’s distasteful to predators like birds or mice.

Milkweed and visitor


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