Botany Photo of the Day

This is not a wheat field, despite its superficial resemblance to an early morning landscape in the rolling hills near Swift Current, Saskatchewan. The tiny violet in the middle of the photograph suggests you're looking at something much smaller in scale. Indeed, this patch of turfy coprosma is perhaps one of the densest concentrations of flowers in UBC Botanical Garden - I'd estimate ten thousand in a square metre, maybe more.

Coprosma petriei is a coffee relative. It's a mat-forming shrub, native to New Zealand. Although Coprosma is typically associated with New Zealand, members of the genus also occur in the islands of Polynesia, Australia, the Juan Fernandez Islands of Chile and Hawaii (e.g., Coprosma ernodeoides).

This particular plant is female: you can see a close-up of the twin stigmas of the flowers in this photograph of Coprosma petriei (for close-ups of both male and female flowers of Coprosma, scroll down the page on Coprosma ernodeoides linked above).

You can see this plant in the Australasian section of the Alpine Garden. Like yesterday's photo of the day, this is another plant that leaves a memory when touched. I'm not certain how best to describe it, but brushing your hand lightly across the stigmas is worth a second of your time.