Melastomataceae 2, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger. Photographed at San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum.

The pistils in this flower remind me of red-hot chili peppers. Of course, they are tiny: so not really peppers.

I found the flower in the South America section of the Botanical Garden. It’s labeled from the Melastomateceae genus, “Tibouchina SP”, from Ecuador.

These two pictures are experiments with using my 18-200 zoom lens with a 36mm extender and a +4 macro filter, tripod mounted of course. The combination works pretty well, although both the focus and the zoom impact the magnification, depth of field, and focus. This makes for a crazy number of variables to consider.

Here’s another photo:

View this photo larger. Photographed at San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum.