Flowering Plants (07)
February 11, 2006
Abeliophyllum distichum
Depending on your perspective, Abeliophyllum distichum is either a rarity or fairly common. If you are familiar with the plant from a horticultural or gardening background, white forsythia is used ornamentally for its spray of white flowers in late winter / early spring (Paghat has a good gardening write-up for white forsythia). However, from a scientific perspective, Abeliophyllum distichum is rare indeed. Restricted to seven known sites in Korea, its future is tenuous. Yong Shik Kim and Mike Maunder have written an excellent account of the species and its history.
Botany / art resource link: If you've some spare time this weekend, you could do worse than spending it on the Rare Books from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library. Also, it's the first time I've seen a garden other than UBC use some of the web-based services or tools available. They've been using del.icio.us to tag the illustrations for annotation and filtering. Oddly enough, I had the same idea for BPotD yesterday after seeing a demo of a soon-to-be-released service while at Northern Voice. I'll add a reminder that I currently use del.icio.us to keep track of all the BPotD resource links.
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 1:47 AM| Comments (3)
February 10, 2006
Brassica oleracea [Botrytis Group] 'Purple Cape'
![Brassica oleracea [Botrytis Group] 'Purple Cape'](http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/potd/cauliflower_purple_cape-thumb.jpg)
I mentioned sacrifice in the Eurya japonica entry a couple of days ago. For today's photograph of 'Purple Cape' cauliflower, I had to step into the raised beds in the Food Garden. Thankfully, the smell from the manure applied to the beds wasn't as potent on Thursday as it was when freshly applied on Tuesday (the day I initially sought out the cauliflower for a photograph). I'm trying to recall when Tony Maniezzo (the horticulturist who is responsible for the Food Garden) originally suggested a photograph of this cauliflower. Was it Monday afternoon or was it after the application of manure on Tuesday...?
'Purple Cape' cauliflower is a heritage variety. The country of origin is apparently disputed (either South Africa or Italy), though it was first introduced to England circa 1808.
On the topic of heritage seeds and plants, this year's Seedy Saturday events are starting in communities across Canada (I see my old hometown is holding one tomorrow!). Seedy Saturday is a series of independent public events held for the purposes of swapping heritage seeds (thereby helping to preserve them) and learning about agricultural heritage and biodiversity conservation.
In BPotD news, I'm speaking about Botany Photo of the Day in two upcoming conferences. The first is this Saturday at Northern Voice (held here in Vancouver), where I'm part of a panel on Blogging in Education. The second conference requires a bit more travel: Museums and the Web 2006, being held in Albuquerque from March 22 to 25.
The reason that I mention the latter now is because I'm taking two weeks off on either side of the conference to travel through (and photograph for BPotD) Oregon, California, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, western Idaho and eastern Washington. I'm planning to leave a lot to fortune on the trip (esp. the weather since the itinerary will be tight); it already looks like I struck out with the desert wildflowers this year. As Phillip mentioned in the BPotD comments recently, there is a record dry spell in Arizona. Despite not having brilliant displays of colour or rain-induced rarities in some places, I'm sure there will be plenty of interesting plants and landscapes along the way. If you have suggestions for (accessible) sites to visit in any of those states, I'd be interested to hear from you. I'll be travelling by car (so no off-roading), but day hikes to exceptional sites are okay.
Photography resource link: For inspiration, Photographs of Lyme Regis, Devon and Dorset by Lois Wakeman – purposefully subtle, yet more compelling for being so.
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 1:06 AM| Comments (9)
February 9, 2006
Eriophyllum lanatum var. lanatum
Thanks to Sheila Williams who sent along this photograph of woolly sunflower. Sheila and a friend kayaked to the Ada Islands last summer (close to the Winchelsea Islands, near Nanaimo, British Columbia). There, they discovered these treasures.
Eriophyllum lanatum also has a more whimsical common name: Oregon sunshine. It is native to western North America, growing from seaside elevations (as seen here) to 3500m (~11500 feet).
The classification of Eriophyllum lanatum and all of its subspecies, varieties and forms has historically been messy – at one time, over seventy-five different names had been applied to what is now roughly recognized as ten morphological varieties. Unfortunately, the need to apply a name to any particular plant masks the biological reality. Eriophyllum lanatum is a species complex – a group of closely-related intergrading taxa.
Species complexes are ideal groups to study the processes of evolution, as the entities involved may be undergoing speciation into distinct entities, i.e., new species. In the intervening time, however, it can be a nightmare to put a name to these intergrading entities; a biological name is intended to represent something that can be clearly delineated, and members of species complexes often defy clear delineation. Still, on the edge of this plant's native distribution where the inflow of new genetic material is restricted by distance, distinct entities can be more easily recognized, hence the assertion that all of British Columbia's plants are of the variety lanatum. At the centre of the range in California, however, things are more complicated. Entities morphologically intergrade and can produce hybrids, though there can be barriers to the latter: see Mooring, J. 2001. Barriers to interbreeding in the Eriophyllum lanatum (Asteraceae, Helenieae) species complex. Am. J. Bot. 88:285-312.
Botany / photography resource link: Photographic Atlas of Plant Anatomy – a compilation of hundreds of categorized plant anatomy images from the research and teaching careers of Dr. John Curtis and Dr. Nels Lersten, with help from Michael Nowak. Even if you don't understand what you are looking at, the images of plant tissue and cells at the microscopic level has a beauty all its own.
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 12:00 AM| Comments (10)
February 8, 2006
Eurya japonica
Let it never be said that I do not make sacrifices for BPotD. To get this close to a eurya in flower requires setting aside the urge to leave quickly. In the garden's interpretative sign for Eurya japonica, the scent is described as “exceptionally malodorous”. I think I can go one step (but not two) beyond that here – part of the scent is metallic in nature, like that of wet rust or tin. It is safe to assume that the odour of the flowers is the reason for the removal of the eurya growing near the doors of the Shop in the Garden. This was done as part of a recent redesign of the garden's front entrance.
During the process of confirming the family information for this genus, it became apparent that the interpretative sign requires an update. On the sign, the plant is described as a camellia relative – this is now only true in a broad sense. A combination of recent molecular work and a review of the morphological properties has clarified the evolutionary relationships of Eurya, such that placing it in the Theaceae (the tea or camellia family) is no longer supported. Instead, the Pentaphylacaceae is a far better fit. I note with some interest that the Pentaphylacaceae have the familial property of being aluminum accumulators; I wonder if there is a correlation between the scent of the flowers and that property.
Botany resource link: It's been a resource link before, but it certainly deserves the honour of being the first site to receive a second mention – Scott's Botanical Links celebrated ten years of entries yesterday. Since February 7, 1996, Dr. Scott Russell of the University of Oklahoma has been compiling a list of botanical resources on the web. I highly recommend subscribing to the site via email or the RSS feed.
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 1:23 AM| Comments (2)
February 7, 2006
Hamamelis ×intermedia 'Fireglow' and Evernia prunastri
Updated February 7, 2006 at 4:06pm: Thanks to Doug who suggested some alternatives to my tentative identification in the comments, I went out and re-examined the lichen. I'm now reasonably confident that this is Evernia prunastri and not what I misidentified it as, Platismatia stenophylla. I think it's an opportune time to remind you that I'm more interested in having the correct information available to BPotD readers than I am in being “right”. If I ever post something that doesn't sit right with you or if you can add something (including a different perspective!), please comment – Daniel.
Mysteries abound, today. Let's start with the lichen. I'm fairly certain it is Platismatia stenophylla or ribbon rag lichen, but it's difficult to confirm. I've only one image in a book to compare with, since there are no results in image search engines for either Platismatia stenophylla or a synonym, Cetraria stenophylla. Nope, I was wrong – Evernia prunastri is a better match. This taxon's native range of occurring in coastal forests of temperate western North America matches, as does its property of growing on trees – so perhaps I'm right. To help be certain, I'd have to break out the chemistry kit. As I've noted before, lichen identification is often aided by observing reactions to chemical reagents (if you ever see a person in a forest with a satchel of small bottles covered by eyedroppers, you will have encountered a bona fide lichenologist).
For Platismatia stenophylla Evernia prunastri, confirming that it is either KC+ (yellowish) or KC- would help verify my tentative identification. This test would involve first wetting the thallus (body) of the lichen with a ten percent potassium hydroxide (KOH) solution, or the K test. The C test would be a dose of bleach, that is, a solution of sodium hypochlorite. If there is no apparent reaction to the bleach on the KOH-soaked lichen, another bit of evidence would be in agreement with the identification. If the test was positive, however, the thallus would change colour. For this lichen, a change to a yellowish colour would help confirm. If it changed a different colour, I'd be back to scratching my head over other possibilities.
The Oregon Coalition of Interdisciplinary Databases has a good entry on Evernia prunastri, and image search comparisons also suggest a match.
The hybrid witchhazel poses a different sort of mystery. Occasionally in the past few years, some staff time has been invested in attempting to verify that a cultivar 'Fireglow' exists. So far, we've come up short. Staff from the garden have searched online, reviewed the horticultural literature and even contacted the International Cultivar Registration Authority for Hamamelis, all to no avail. Its existence as a cultivar could be due to something as simple as a clerical error in its thirty year history. Or, perhaps it is a locally-developed selection, named and sold only to a select few three decades ago (it was purchased from a now-closed local nursery). Too, it could be a misidentification and actually an entirely different cultivar. We haven't yet figured it out.
Photography resource link: Tripod Therapy, an article by Rod Barbee for Nature Photographers Online. Good advice regarding one of photography's most important tools.
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 12:00 AM| Comments (11)
February 5, 2006
Viburnum ×bodnantense 'Charles Lamont'
This sweet-scented, winter-flowering viburnum is not named after the director of a number of Abbott and Costello films. Instead, the name honours a former assistant curator in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. The Royal Horticultural Society's account for Viburnum ×bodnantense tells the story.
Photography resource link: Subject Matter and Print Size, an essay by Alain Briot for The Luminous Landscape (part of his Reflections on Photography and Art series).
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 1:25 AM| Comments (4)
February 4, 2006
Rhododendron ririei
There are roughly one thousand species of Rhododedron in the world. Of these, nearly six hundred can be found in China. Just over four hundred can only be found in China (endemics); Rhododendron ririei is one of the these, native only to the southwestern portion of Sichuan.
Like Rhododendron moupinense, it is one of the earliest flowering rhododendrons locally.
The scientific description is available online from the Flora of China: Rhododendron ririei.
No resource link today – instead, I'll invite you to read the tributes and stories from some of the garden's researchers, staff and Friends of the Garden for the recently deceased Christopher Lloyd of Great Dixter: Christopher Lloyd (Christo) 1921-2006.
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 1:21 AM| Comments (6)
XML Feeds: Atom | RSS 2.0 | RSS 1.0 | What is RSS? | RSS Tools
Botany Photo of the Day and all associated images are licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Botany Photo of the Day is a project of the UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research, located in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada. UBC BGCPR is a department of the Faculty of Land and Food Systems within The University of British Columbia.