Botany Photo of the Day

A thank you to Australia's Ken Beath, aka kjbeath@Flickr for today's photograph of an Australian native plant (original image via the Flickr BPotD Group Pool). Ken also has a web site, complete with photo galleries. The image is much appreciated, Ken!

As Ken notes, the common name for this plant is Christmas bells, due to the time of year it flowers in its native New South Wales. According to the Pacific Bulb Society's page on Blandfordia, the four species in the genus Blandfordia may also be collectively known as Christmas bells, so that is worth noting if you intend to source this plant for your garden and you prefer common names.

Like many Australian plants, the history of this species in both botany and horticulture contains the words “Britain” and “English”. Tony Cavanagh of The Society for Growing Australian Plants has written an excellent summary of the history of the genus Blandfordia, complete with English botanists, horticulturists and nobles. If you're more interested in the plant itself, the Australian National Botanic Gardens has produced this factsheet on Blandfordia nobilis.

Botany resource link: I linked to University of Connecticut's EEB Plant Growth Facilities yesterday, but I thought I'd point out this in particular today: Pollination Syndromes is a categorical listing of different modes of pollination (by wind, by bat, etc.) accompanied by links to factsheets about the plants in the EEB Plant Growth Facilities currently in flower. The result of aggregating this information is a very handy way of comparing pollination syndromes.