Kip’s Comments - July 19, 2023

Chickory… Minolta… A Connection

With this post I will quickly date myself among photographers, but that is OK. I am fortunate to enjoy a good life and to be continually blessed with many simple pleasures.

Decades ago, when I switched from shooting lethal to shooting with lenses (I still hunt, just very seldom), I was a dedicated shooter of Minolta camera equipment. My emphasis was on wildflowers anywhere I could find them. One species in particular - chickory - always seemed to grab my attention. I photographed the plant when I found it, and quizzed my wife when we saw it together, and always had a visual interest in it.

Today I found chickory within easy reach and took the time to study the plant. This set of blooms was along a highway in the space between the edge of the blacktop and the gravel. How the plant was surviving is a question I cannot answer. Since it was close and attractive, I photographed a couple of blossoms as seen here.

Throughout this post I have been describing fond memories of pretty blossoms and pictures. What may surprise you is that chickory is an invasive plant from the Asia/Europe area. It can become established, but I have yet to see it displace any native plants.

I suppose if I was a wildflower purist I would have pulled this plant. Instead I thought back to when I first found and photographed chickory using my Minolta X-570 shooting Kodak Ektachrome or Fuji Velvia film. I won’t call those the good old days, but I certainly learned much by photographing wildflowers on film. I continue to use what I learned today.

Chickory - Image 830165

Chickory - Image 830175