Imaging Brazil 382: Bromeliad in Belo Horizonte, MG (2012)

A personal selection of photographs with their stories.

382: Bromeliad

During my stay in Belo Horizonte, I must have visited the Botanical Garden more than ten times. This botanical garden is part of the local ZOO, and is located at the margin of Lake Pampulha. Although this garden is not as big as its counterpart in Rio de Janeiro, the garden hosts an interesting collection of a broad variety of plants and flowers. During each visit, I took dozens of photographs of the plants and flowers in various shapes and hues. When I visited the greenhouses, orchids and bromeliads attracted my attention. There are over 3400 bromeliad species, and the most familiar specie is the delicious pineapple. They are able to store water at their leaf bases. Bromeliads are mainly found in the American tropics and may host bright colorful flowers, like the red flower in this photograph.

© Adriano Antoine Robbesom 2012, 2017

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Imaging The Netherlands 038: Dutch Bark in Groningen (GR)

A personal selection of photographs with their stories.

038: Dutch bark

Groningen is a city with a lot of history. Its origin is unsure – some even tried to refer to expelled people from Troy, led by the legendary figure Guno, that settled there. More likely, the first settlers must have arrived in the region about 1700 years ago. As happened with many historic cities in the Netherlands, Groningen gained a canal system (‘grachtengordel’) as a means of defense against invaders. The canal system in Groningen is called the ‘Diepenring’. The boat in the photograph is a Dutch bark, most probably a ‘tjalk’: a flatbottom vessel that is used for transport over the Dutch waterways. There are still many Dutch barks in circulation: some of them have been transformed into “woonboten’, barks used for permanent residence.

© Adriano Antoine Robbesom 2010, 2017