Archive for category: Uncategorized

I spent some time in the yard today with my Canon Rebel T2i.  I love the convenience of having a camera in my phone, but it just doesn’t have the glass… with a 60mm macro lens, I can get a lot more detail, and catch more interesting things.

 

This is the Passiflora caerulea vine that has gone into the creekside and grows up the dead sumac bush.

Even with a considerable distance, the macro lens gets right in there.

There’s an ant on this anther.

Another flower on the same vine.  The three bees were wrestling all over one another in a pile, and it seemed really odd – they usually do that for pollen, but not so much nectar in the passionflowers.  Then, when I was looking at the images in the camera, I realized that they have RIPPED OFF the pollen anthers, and are working them over in the middle of the flower.  They remind me of Macbeth’s witches around their cauldron.

A bumblebee on Passiflora incarnata.

This one, I could get right above – so I could focus close, and get a lot of detail.  I really do love the camera, and this lens.

It’s the bee’s knees.  Those are pollen grains.

Passiflora incarnata “Bill’s Delight.”

Close up on the center of the flower.

These corona filaments swirl around themselves in very odd patterns.

…and this flower is pollinating itself.   I just hope it doesn’t go blind.  I love how the anther looks like a tongue licking the stigma.

This exceptionally handsome Viceroy butterfly, Limenitis archippus, has set up a territory which includes the fig tree, the Maximilian sunflowers, and part of the creekside brush.  He will aggressively chase any of the Fritilaries or other butterflies that come close, and sometimes he even buzzes the wasps.  He’s a little petty tyrant.

At least he’s pretty.

I now have four different species of Cestrum – this is Cestrum aurantium “Orange Zest.”  It’s hardy in our zone, and shoots out these bundles of cheery orange-yellow flowers all summer long.

I just wish they were as fragrant as their cousins – Cestrum nocturnum is my favorite fragrant flower in the world; I keep a bush in a pot, and bring it in to the bedroom when it’s in flower.  It only flowers at night.  This one has pretty flowers all day long – but no smell at all.

This lovely little thing is Passiflora mooreana.  It’s easy to suspect the photo for making it look kind of faded and blue, but that’s the way it looks in real life – the whole plant has a kind of sage green tint to it.

a solo shot in the light of the westering sun:

They smell sweet, too.  I really love the ones with sweet scents.  It’s surprisingly powerful, for such a small flower – the flower is only about two inches across, if that.  Here it is next to P. caerulea. 

and a closeup of the center:

another one that’s blooming well right now, is Passiflora incarnata “Bill’s Delight,” a pure-white selection of the native species from Companion Plants nursery.  I had one of these a year ago, and then it suddenly died from the roots up – it looked like slugs ate the skin off the stem.  Now, it’s going gangbusters, sprawling out of its pot and putting up new shoots.

We have two big Golden Orb Weavers in the garden this year – I am going to start feeding them grasshoppers.  The mantises aren’t eating them up fast enough. 

\and the “Scentsation” rose that I planted for Chris is doing well – I really want for it to start putting out more flowers at a time, but it is still adapting and getting its feet under it.

 

 

I’m sorry about the previous post being locked – it’s got a lot of information that’s not quite public domain yet.  But the general idea, I can give you….

 

Before Bill Wyatt passed in 2009, he and I had a talk about getting somebody to replicate his silk reel design.

 

These nice folks stepped up.  I met Roy and Henry at SOAR last October, and they agreed to give it a try.  We’re in the process of testing the prototype.

 

Yaay, silk!

We’ve had a beautiful weather year for the garden.  The moist spring turned into a warm but not parched summer, and our fall cold front came almost a month early, bringing lovely cooler nights and plenty of rain.  Because of the way our weather works in this part of Texas, it’s almost like we have two springs – everything gets a second wind, picks up, and rejuvenates.

Through the summer, I’ve had the occasional bloom on my “Temptation x Temptation” passionflower vine.  This is a cross originally made by Volker Sanders in Germany, although I got my plant from Passiflorista on Ebay (Jim Nevers).  During the hottest days, the flowers suffered horribly – they looked like they had been under a heat lamp, with wilted petals and limp coronas.  I will have to get a photo if it happens again – it was a real surprise the first time.  The other types do not have this problem.  Now, however, it’s putting out these luscious, plump flowers with the most amazing coloring.

When I have just one in my hand, the flower on “Temptation x Temptation” looks a lot like the “Incense” vine that it is adjacent to (and mingled with) – big, purple, curly flower.  But the color is really quite different.

“Incense” on the left, “Temptation x Temptation” on the right. If you look, you can see the different leaves, too – “Incense” has five-fingered leaves, and “Temptation x Temptation has three-fingered.

 

Very close to, the corona filaments look like something from under the sea – maybe a sea urchin…

 

Or a sea anemone.

From the side, there’s a lot of difference between the two flowers.  “Temptation x Temptation” is strongly reflexed – meaning that the petals pull back from the flower and arch downward, so looking from the top you see the corona floating in the air.  They’re also very robust and fleshy – this plant is a tetraploid hybrid, meaning that its parent plants were chemically treated during the hybridizing process to give it double the usual number of genes.  Tetraploids are famous for thick, hardy plants and big flowers. The anthers on this plant are often a little odd – here, they’re pointing upward at the sky, instead of downward at the theoretical bee that should be pollinating the plant.  They sometimes manage to rotate downward before the flower closes, but sometimes not.

In the side view, “Incense” is nearly flat.

 

A new addition – this one is “Blue-Eyed Susan,” with parentage similar to “Temptation x Temptation” and another hybrid, “Bucky” bred by Jim Nevers in Florida.  I’m hoping with these three tetraploid hybrids, I might be able to get some fruit.  “Bucky” in particular is known for good fruit. Because of the different chromosome number, tetraploid (4n) plants can’t set fruit with normal diploid (2n) pollen; they need 4n pollinators.

 

 

And this is “Blue Bouqet” – another hybrid, this one made by Richard McCain.  This game little plant just got out after traveling cross-country in a postal box; the whole plant isn’t much past a foot tall, but it’s bloomed already.  It’s supposed to be more blue, so we’ll see if that happens.  A lot of this kind of flower difference comes down to things like humidity, soil chemistry, hours  and intensity of sunshine, etc.