While looking over photos from my California desert trip this spring, I came upon this curious plant:
You can see most of the plant is dead (white branches), though there are two clumps of vigorous growth, shown up close here:
What’s going on here?
Answer Monday!
Castor Bean – Ricinis communis. Folks who make their living creating fabulous color displays for public gardens, municipalities, and commercial parks love ‘em. Civilian gardeners/plant geeks love ‘em. People who get their knickers in a twist about poisonous plants do not.
Pros: ridiculously rapid growth, huge leaves for that tropical look, tolerant of less-than-ideal conditions, cheap and easy to grow from seed, weird wild flowers and seed pods.
Cons: pretty darn poisonous. A few seeds (have seen figures from four to 20), chewed up to release the toxic protein ricin, will allegedly kill you.… Continue reading this article “Beantroversy”
As Jason rightly guessed, this is a Schlumbergera species, specifically S. truncata, also known as the Thanksgiving cactus (which has toothed edges as shown). It’s related to the Christmas cactus (S. bridgesii – scalloped edges) and the Easter cactus (S. gaertneri, whose segments are three-sided rather than flattened). [Disclaimer: the nomenclature of this genus and its species is a mess. Even the university websites disagree on whether it’s Schlumbergera, Hatiora, or Rhipsalidopsis.… Continue reading this article “Morphology quiz answers”
Initially I was disappointed that no one answered the question…then Paul W. emailed to say that the post wasn’t accepting comments. We’re not sure why that happened, but Paul and perhaps many of you knew this was part of the flower of Sarracenia flava – the yellow pitcher plant:
I think this is a stunning flower whose floral structure promotes cross-pollination. Insects crawl in between the long yellow petals and the green "umbrella" to enter the flower and reach the pollen:
Before they reach the anthers, however, their backs rub up against the stigma, which are five tiny points at the "spokes" of the umbrella. … Continue reading this article “Green mystery disk identified!”
What is this "green disk of mystery?" It’s about 2" in diameter:
Answer on Monday – have a great weekend!
Recently I have been fascinated by the native wildflower field I planted last fall. Although I seeded it with the same mixture of seeds (mixed with sand to spread them evenly), you can see that we have clumps of different flowers throughout the area.
Figure 1. Descanso Gardens, California
The area where the wildflowers were planted had several 1-2 foot raised mounds; some were in the shape of keyholes. These were built with silty sand from a nearby seasonal stream that had some erosion problems in a rainy year.… Continue reading this article “Visiting Professor guest post: Native wildflowers”
A few of you bravely hazarded guesses about this plant, and while it is a contorted specimen, it’s actually Ulmus glabra ‘Camperdownii’, otherwise known as Camperdown elm. Here’s a photo of a lovely example at Marymoor Park near Seattle:
As plant geeks already know, this odd tree was propagated from a mutant branch discovered on the Earl of Camperdown’s estate in Scotland in the 1800s. All Camperdown elms are grown from cuttings originating from this single tree grafted onto a Ulmus spp.… Continue reading this article “Friday puzzle untangled”
On a recent spring day, I photographed this Medusa-like structure:
But rather than snakes, these are branches – and they are typical of a particular type of tree commonly used in landscapes. What is it?
Answer and fun facts on Monday!
Every once in awhile I become infatuated with some idea and can’t stop for looking for information on it. It usually starts when I want to find a good quote for a particular article or column that I’m writing and then ends up swallowing two or three days. Well, it happened to me again yesterday and spilled over into today. I’m currently finishing up a project with an old friend of mine from college who happens to be a political science professor at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. … Continue reading this article “A Dangerous Game”
More from our Ornamental Plant Production class tour across the state. One of our stops was James River Nurseries, Inc. Owner Mike Hildebrand has a built a unique and diverse business – they not only grow but do landscape design-build-install, all in the huge market of central and northern Virginia and beyond.
Here’s some arborvitae that spent the past few weeks at one of their job sites north of Richmond, waiting to be planting. They’re now back at the nursery. … Continue reading this article “Oh, Deer…”