Thursday, July 4, 2019

Vineyard Jewels

I've been writing about all of the rain that we have been having, most recently on June 26th when we had 2-inches of rain. But, following that day, we had a mini-heat wave where for 3 days the temperatures exceeded 90 degrees. On the first day of the heat wave, June 26th, the fog also had rolled in so when we went to the vineyard in the early morning, I captured this photo of a spider web.
The mini-heat wave caused all of the grape flowers to bloom so at the end of the heat wave, the entire vineyard, including our late blooming Cabernet Sauvignon was in bloom.
The mini-heat wave temperatures were ideal for flowering or anthesis. Flowering proceeds rapidly when temperatures range between 85° and 95°F. The calyptra, the grapevine flower petals, detaches from the pedicel exposing the stamen and stigma.
Since our work brings us close to each grape shoot, I found this leaf which was the perfect receptacle for the detached calyptras for the adjacent grape flower. I thought it was pretty cool. Once I took the photo, I cleaned the leaf off the detached calyptras and continued working.

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