Finally, I’ve given a quiz that’s fooled everyone!
Believe it or not, this is a foxglove flower mutation:
Often, species with irregular flower will have flower which revert to a more primitive form. In the case of foxglove, the bilaterally symmetrical flower reverts to the ancestral radial form – a phenomenon called peloria. Apparently foxglove floral variations are pretty common and have been reported in the literature for many decades.
Having now depressed my Michigan colleague with my earlier post, here’s a little lighthearted fun for the long weekend:
This photo is from Brandi at Fine Gardening. Can you figure out (1) what it is and (2) why it looks like this?
Monday’s photo will reveal more, and we’ll discuss the second question in more detail.
Have a great holiday – enjoy yourselves!
“The Texas A&M University System is moving ahead with a controversial method of evaluating how much professors are worth, based on their salaries, how much research money they bring in, and how much money they generate from teaching, The Bryan-College Station Eagle reports. Under the proposal, officials will add the money generated by each professor and subtract that amount from his or her salary to get a bottom-line value for each, according to the article.”
This bodes ill for faculty like myself who have Extension appointments. … Continue reading this article “Further decline of “public” education”
Sometimes I am not such a good garden professor. That’s because, when I get home, I sometimes (OK — often) don’t give my plants the attention they need. It’s also because, when we leave for vacation, I often forget to tell whoever is watching the animals to keep their eyes on the plants too. Now, really, you would think that someone who saw a plant on the back porch in full wilt would think “Hey, Maybe I should water that!” … Continue reading this article “My Long Suffering Basil”
Almost a year ago I posted my complaints about rubber mulch (you can find the posting here). This week I was contacted by Jesse, a purveyor of rubber mulches. We’ve had a very civil discussion about the topic, and he asked me to review his fact sheet.
Which leads me to today’s assignment. I have no personal experience with rubber mulch, so I’d like to hear from you about your experiences with this product. Specifically:
1) Have you seen fungi growing on rubber mulch?… Continue reading this article “Rubber mulch – the discussion continues”
I like science. I see it as a way to figure things out. It creates a combination of a) things we’re pretty sure of (facts about the shape of DNA, the optimum pH for certain plant species, and theories consistent with such facts, for example) and importantly, b) questions we can ask next. When research is designed to answer those new questions, the results will either support the things we’re pretty sure of and lead to an expanded understanding and new questions, or they won’t support what we thought we knew and the results will lead to a different understanding and new questions. … Continue reading this article “Why I like science (our visiting professor returns)”
One of the potential environmental benefits that came up in our discussion of the pro’s and con’s of turfgrass was carbon sequestration. The basic premise of carbon sequestration is to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and ‘lock it up’ in a form that won’t contribute to further global warming. One of the fallacies floating around these days is that any plant that photosynthesizes, takes up CO2 and thereby sequesters carbon. What we need to realize is that leaves give off CO2 at night via respiration and all non-photosynthetic (non-green) plant parts such as roots and stems give off CO2 virtually all the time. … Continue reading this article “Confessions of a carbon sequestration skeptic”
There is a general misunderstanding among the gardening (and yard owning) community about dog spots. It seems that some people believe that dog spots occur because of a high or low pH or because of some sort of poison in a dog’s urine, but that really isn’t the case at all. Dog spots occur because of something that I pointed out a few weeks ago in another post. Urine contains a lot of nitrogen. When a dog pees on your lawn that extra nitrogen isn’t used and so ends up being poisonous to the grass which is peed upon. … Continue reading this article “Dog Spots”
A few weeks ago I was in Olympia (it misses you Bert!) reviewing grant applications. As I tend to do whenever I have time and my camera, I set out in search of gardening goofs that evening. Here’s the edge of a relatively new commercial site I discovered:
OK, not too bad so far. We’ve got a nice stone mulch next to the curb, then a lovely groundcover, in flower, that also functions as a living mulch. … Continue reading this article “Why won’t landscapers use mulch?”
Ha ha hahahaha
*mad scientist-type cackling*
Purslane? Nyet! (but good guess).
It’s an Impatien! Specifically, Impatien repens, common names variously Ceylon Jewelweed, Golden Dragon Impatien, etc. Ours is actually pretty small – can form huge clumps and cascading torrents in warmer zones.
Flower is typical of many members of the genus, and they ALL have the little spur in the rear.
For more weird, wild species impatiens, visit the Cistus Nursery website (I’m pretty sure they used to sell this, but I don’t see it listed currently). … Continue reading this article “Quiz Plant Revealed”