Unnamed, unseen
Looking down to the towering cliffs of Madeira's northern coastline, with one of its many endemic species in the foreground - Helichrysum melaleucum. The book Flora of Madeira gives its (Portuguese) common name as “Perpetua” or “Propéta”, though I cannot find anywhere online using these names for this particular species, or indeed anywhere giving it a common name at all. Though Perpetua is the Portuguese common name for at least one other species in the genus, so perhaps it is just used as a catch-all common name for various species in the genus.
I find the fact it is not afforded a common name, or at the very least its own one, surprising given that it is quite a common plant on Madeira (my own experience confirmed this) and one with quite conspicuous flowers too. But plants have always been challenged in the PR department, being perceived to lack the charisma of their zoological counterparts, a phenomenon attributed to the condition known as plant blindness. Despite this condition starting to receive more attention in our increasingly nature deficient world, the World Health Organization website does not currently list a definitive set of symptoms. However it does for smallpox and bubonic plague, so perhaps they just haven't updated their website in a while.
If you're wondering whether suffer from it though, then if you didn't immediately realise that the plant was the main subject of the photo, I'm afraid I have some bad news for you.
More details
- 23rd March, 2024
- Canon EOS 5D Mark III
- EF16-35mm f/4L IS USM at 16.0mm
- 1/125s at f/18, ISO 400
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- Cliffs
- Clouds
- Coast
- Endemic
- Flowers
- Helichrysum melaleucum
- Madeira
- Perpetua
- Plant
- Sea
- Water