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I took heavy leather gloves and Felco pruning shears<\/a> to cut this puppy down and still managed to get injured by the finer-than-hypodermic thorns. The stalk is woody and very hard, precluding my usual technique of inserting a bamboo skewer for mounting in the home studio. I had to resort to a couple of cable ties instead. You can just see the skewer at the base of the stalk.<\/p>\n Talk of a passive defense mechanism. Thorns everywhere. Whoever named this the ‘Cotton’ Thistle had a pretty warped sense of humor.<\/p>\n Here is the plant in its natural habitat, already some 6 feet tall:<\/p>\n Owing to the considerable depth of the plant I had to expose no fewer than 113 images for focus stacking, spanning the complete 6″ range of movement of the lower rack of the Nikon PB4 bellows<\/a>.<\/p>\n A remarkable – and dangerous – plant.<\/p>\n Macro – Leica SL2S, 135mm El Nikkor, Nikon PB4 bellows, three strobes, ISO 100 at F\/22. 113 images focus stacked in Helicon Focus. Habitat – iPhone 12 Pro Max.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prickly Customer. Click the image for a larger version. I took heavy leather gloves and Felco pruning shears to cut this puppy down and still managed to get injured by the finer-than-hypodermic thorns. The stalk is woody and very hard, precluding my usual technique of inserting a bamboo skewer for mounting in the home studio. … Continue reading Cotton Thistle<\/span>
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