Here are some photographs of wild flowers I found in Tenerife. We were staying in Anaga in April when there are flowers coming out everywhere. Human-vision images are on the left, and honeybee vision is on the right. We didn’t have a species guide, so I haven’t identified them all.
Some kind of dandilion (daisy family – Asteraceae). Human left, honeybee right. Like a dandilion the centre of the flower absorbs UV while the ends of the petals reflects it.
Some kind of Brassica (maybe a mustard?). To us the flowers are plain yellow, but to a honeybee the veins and centres of the flowers will create colourful signals.
Blue pimpernel Anagallis monelli in Tenerife. This pretty little flower has extremely high UV reflectance that creates a strong UV signal to honeybee vision.
Echium angustifolium in Tenerife (Borage family). To us the flowers are a fairly uniform purple, but bees can see two UV absorbent patches at the top of the flower.
Echium angustifolium in Tenerife (Borage family). To us the flowers are a fairly uniform purple, but bees can see two UV absorbent patches at the top of the flower.
Lotus glaucus in Tenerife (pea family). Human left, honeybee right. The petals all look yellow to us, but some reflect UV and others don’t, making a red/purple contrast visible to bees.
Lavander – lavandula buchii in Tenerife
Astydamia latifolia in Tenerife.
Not sure what species. The little blisters on the leaf edges are doing a good job of reflecting all spectra though.
Not sure what species this is…
Equipment:
These photographs were all taken with a Samsung NX1000 converted to full spectrum using a Novoflex Noflexar 35mm lens through a Baader UV/IR cut filter and Baader Venus-U filter. Photos were normalised against a sintered PTFE diffuse standard to control for lighting (visible in the last photo). Then I used my conversion software to map the reflectance images to human (CIE XYZ) and honeybee worker vision. The photos were then square-root transformed from linear cone-catch values to make them look more “normal” on monitors.
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