Bloomin’ closeups!

“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” Gertrude Stein wrote in 1913, and though she wasn’t writing about flowers per se, that quote is often used to say that something is exactly what it looks like.

We know a tulip is a tulip even when it comes in dozens of colors and many shapes. The same goes for day lilies and daisies.

And for lilacs and irises and cacti.

We see a tall skinny plant with a huge yellow bloom, and we know it’s a sunflower. We see a fuzzy shrub of gray and grayish purple, and we know it’s lavender.

But – much like in love – sometimes everything changes once you get really close. Suddenly things may not look exactly like you thought they looked because your perspective changed.

Up close, a sunflower’s brownish face becomes an intricate honeycomb pattern, and there’s little or no yellow in sight.

Inside a pink tulip’s bloom you may find stripes of white, light green and muddled yellow.

And up close, some cacti look more like the desert landscape that surrounds them than like a plant.

Our photographer Brian Plonka came up with this idea:

He wanted to take some extremely close-up pictures of flowers and see if readers can guess what they are.

So here you go. On these pages are six shots of relatively common blooms, and one that Brian says is a little tricky.

On Page 13 you’ll find a coupon to fill out with the correct names and send to us.

If you have all six names right, we’ll enter you in a drawing for gardening books.

We’ll give out three wonderful books, to three happy readers.

Good luck, and enjoy the photos.