Botany Photo of the Day

After spending most of the past twenty-four hours wrestling with the garden's web server (with more to go since it's still not working properly), I know I'd appreciate a flower picture today for a bit of stress relief. In case the problems caused you to miss yesterday's photograph, here's the link: Solanum laciniatum.

Today's photograph features an as-yet unidentified lily from UBC's David C. Lam Asian Garden, photographed in July of this year. If you were to look at the label for this plant, you would observe that it's been designated Lilium sp. SICH.2255. “SICH.2255” is the plant's wild-collected number, and signifies that this plant was collected during the Sichuan Expedition to western China. When the plant is finally identified, it will retain the wild collected number, since the number is the only identifier attached to the propagated plants distributed post-expedition and the associated herbarium specimens. It can then be used to synchronize the identification with the distributed material.

Speaking of expeditions, Peter Wharton, curator of the Asian garden, is the garden's resident “plant-hunter”. He is soon to travel to Burma Vietnam to scout the region for what hopefully will become a long-term project on plant conservation in the area. I'm hoping that when he returns, he'll share some of his photographs with all of us on BPotD.

In BPotD news, the main page of the AOL web site on October 28 mentioned BPotD in their LiveWeb Blog section. Not sure how I feel about the site being listed under “more online distractions”, but it's still a welcome plug.

Lastly, Circus of the Spineless Number 2 is live. I didn't contribute any BPotD entries this time, but I'm still compelled to recognize the effort behind putting together an assemblage of writings about organisms and biodiversity. I particularly like this item from it: the creosote bush katydid.

Botany resource link: From the University of Pennsylvania, the Ethiopian Famine Food Field Guide delves into the wild plants consumed in Ethiopia. Be sure to click on Field Guide, then use the Category links across the top to dive into the information on the one hundred or so species of plants detailed (with photographs).