The boojum tree is one of the strangest plants imaginable. For most of the year it is leafless and looks like a giant upturned turnip. Its common name was coined by the plant explorer Godfrey Sykes, who found it in 1922 and said "It must be a boojum!". In saying this, he was referring of the strange and mythical creature that the author Lewis Carroll called a boojum in his children's book, The Hunting of the Snark. The Spanish common name for this tree is Cirio, referring to its candle-like appearance.
The plant itself is restricted to a relatively small region of the Baja California peninsula of Mexico (but with a small population also on the extreme western side of state of Sonora on the Mexican mainland). However, within this restricted region it is very common and sometimes forms forests that dominate the landscape on rocky hillsides or flat plains. In other cases the boojum grows in mixed communities with two other characteristic large stem succulents of the Baja California Desert - the giant cardon cactus and the elephant tree (Pachycormus). -------------------------- High contrast and brightness to convert color image to an almost black and white illustration. Added black border because the white photo was lost on the web page...
If you are reading this, I invite you to creatively crop away and repost your version. You can resize the photo using plain white as the background if you even want to go landscape on me...
Hi Michael, interesting bit of backround information, but the high key photo is probably even more intersting. Very abstract as well as artistic. Something different for a change, but I do like it. Alot. Only nitpicky thing I can think of is that I think it can use a bit more contrast or gradient in tone to give the tree a bit more depth and geometrical shape.
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