Speaking of cut flowers, I often think that the most beautiful part of what’s in the vase isn’t necessarily the blooms. Photographer Lee Friedlander, whose work often exhibits a droll-to-bratty iconoclastic bent, did a book just a few years ago that was titled Stems. (The Photo-Eye online bookstore uses the BookTease feature that lets you take a look at some of the images in the book.)

As you might guess from the title, it’s almost exclusively photos of plants in vases where the flowers have been cropped out of the picture. It’s a little willful, for sure, but I think many of the images are really beautiful. See what you think…