I visited the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, Chaska MN (website), at the end of April. I had heard about it for years and I had traveled with them on several excellent garden tours, so I was eager to see it. I found it was much more than I had expected.
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| a magnolia in flower |
Petunias Engineered. Petunia--the common one is Petunia x atkinsiana--are easy to grow. Petunias are fast-growing, hardy, diploid plants and so several plant research labs tried studying them. They soon became a model organism, widely used for research on plants, including plant genetics. (See previous blog on petunias generally). They were cutting edge for inserting and turning on genes from other species.
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| petunias in many colors |
For this blog, I shopped a large garden store and came home with two transgenic petunias--orange and bioluminescent--and possibly the blackest flower in the world. Researchers inserted genes from corn into petunias to see how the biochemical pathways work; the successful insertion created an orange-flowered petunia. The orange petunia was a desirable garden plant which caused a scandal, a story I find fascinating.
Petunias are everywhere: in summer street plantings, in decorative pots, in hanging baskets. And yet, petunias are anonymous. Poor petunia, we barely notice you.
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| red petunias |
My blog for this week, on petunias (Petunia), is running way behind. So, how about a post celebrating early summer flowers?
Blanket flower, Gaillardia (sunflower family, Asteraceae), below, is native to North America. There are 12 species, but only two are widespread, Gaillardia aristida and Gaillardia pulcella. The first is in the western and northern North America, the second in eastern and southern. Gaillardia xgrandiflora is their hybrid. I've seen them growing in gardens from Oregon to Florida, and if you were out hiking now, you could find wild ones in flower, all across the continent.
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| blanket flower, Gaillardia |
On my recent trip to the Galapagos I joined park rangers on hikes, and usually I was a laggard. I kept stopping to see the plants. The rest of the group hopped from one animal photo op to the next. I tried to keep up but did a bad job of it.
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| the endemic tree cactus Opuntia galapagela |
Just like its animals, the Galapagos's plants include many that are unique and that differ from their mainland relatives and between islands.
I recently visited the Galapagos for the first time, on a tour with the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and Knowmad Adventures. The Galapagos Islands, whose animals and plants played a crucial role in Charles Darwin formulating his ideas of evolutionary change, is Must See location for biologists...so, contrarily, I scorned it for 50-odd years. But, eventually my curiousity sent me there.
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| Galapagos |
Sweet clover, genus Melilotus, is a group of some 23 species native to Eurasia, in the pea family, Fabaceae. Two of them, yellow sweet clover, Melilotus officinalis, and white sweet clover, Melilotus albus, are found all over North America. They are weedy and often quite aggressive, building up large populations quickly. But they add nitrogen to the soil, are good forage for livestock, are a source of honey for bees, and more. They have both supporters and detractors.
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| yellow sweet clover, Melilotus officinalis |
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| white sweet clover Melilotus albus |