Botany Photo of the Day

Thank you once again to Katy S for sharing one of her photographs. This is a January 2006 photograph from Kings Park Botanic Gardens in Perth, Australia.

Neither Katy nor I knew the name of the plant beyond it being a Verticordia. I looked at every image of Verticordia I could find on FloraBase and came up with a few possibilities. While trying to find some confirmation of my amateur guesses, I ended up talking with Eric La Fountaine. Eric spent some time in Kings Park a couple years ago. I don't think I ever would have guessed that he took a photograph of the exact same plant (Kings Park has roughly 2000 of Western Australia's 12000 species on display in its Western Australian Botanic Garden), which he then posted in the stumpers forum in this thread. So, we now have a name, or rather, know that we don't have one: Verticordia hybrid is the limit of identification, so far.

Plants in the genus Verticordia are commonly known as featherflowers or morrisons. Florabase explains the origin of the name: “From the Latin verticordia; an epithet of Venus, the Turner of Hearts”. Wikipedia has a similar definition: The name Verticordia means ‘turns the heart’, presumably this is the effect it had on botanist A. P. de Candolle who named the genus.”. Considering the poetic nature of the scientific name and one of its common names, perhaps I should have posted this entry on July 3.

The genus primarily occurs in Western Australia, though a limited number of the ninety-nine (or so) species can be found in Australia's Northern Territory.

Nature resource link: The First Annual Blogger Bioblitz (and updates) discovered via Bev Wigney's blog featured yesterday. The idea is to document the flora and fauna in a certain place for a certain amount of time. Too many benefits to list, really – polishing observation skills, becoming familiar with a place, improving identification skills, sharing a piece of the world with others and much more. I'm still wavering on whether I have the time to participate, but if you throw your hat in the ring, I'd be happy to feature what you discover via BPotD.