📷 Godetia — Hill Station, India · 12 Jun 2026
A photograph and a story, every morning
Godetia
Hill Station, India · nature
A godetia opens wide in late afternoon, pink streaked with white. A garden flower that looks like crepe paper because it almost is.
Godetia — sometimes called farewell-to-spring — is one of the annuals that flowers gloriously for a few weeks each year and then disappears entirely. The petals are thin enough that they almost look translucent in good light, with that ribbed surface that crepe paper has. The colours range from deep magenta to white, often streaked together on the same bloom.
This one was in a hill-station garden where the gardener had clearly planted out a whole bed of them, and they had all opened in the same week. I went in close to a single flower because the cluster was too busy a frame. The light was coming through the petals from behind, picking out the veining. Godetia only blooms for a single morning at a time — by tomorrow this exact flower will be done. The plant doesn't seem to mind. It opens another one.