Sunday, March 30, 2025
Spearleaf stonecrop, Sedum lanceolatum Common in the Rockies and the West
Monday, March 24, 2025
Gardening for Moths
Monday, March 17, 2025
Plant Story: Pincushion Flower, Scabious
I first remember noticing pincushion flower (also called scabious, honeysuckle family, Caprifoliaceae) on a hike on the coast of Italy. What a pretty flower!
scabious, Scabiosa or Krautia, in Italy |
Sunday, March 9, 2025
Moth Pollination 3. Settling Moths
a settling moth, the bindweed or four-spotted moth, Tyta luctosa Denis & Schiffermüller (Noctuidae) on a cosmos (Cosmos) flower |
Sunday, March 2, 2025
Travel Story--Beaches in Taiwan
Taiwan is an island just east of the continent of Asia. It is subtropical to tropical, full of scenic vistas, rugged mountains, and, being an island, it is surrounded by beaches. When the Portuguese discovered it in the 1500s, they called it Ilha Formosa, "beautiful island" an aptly descriptive name, though no longer in use.
beach, looking south |
It is the end of winter, Colorado is still brown and beige, so here is a photo tour of coastal Taiwan. My photos are not especially colorful, so remember to imagine the temperature is a very comfortable 80oF, a light wind is blowing and the humidity is very high.
Monday, February 24, 2025
Moth Pollination 2. Sphinx Moths aka Hawkmoths and Hummingbird Moths
Monday, February 17, 2025
Citron, An Old Citrus Fruit
One of the varieties of citron, Citrus medica, the etrog |
Monday, February 10, 2025
Moth Pollination I. Overview.
Moths are the secret pollinators. They fly at dusk or after dark, tend to be small, and have blotchy color patterns. For all those reasons, they get little attention. And yet: Moths are very numerous. They make up most of the insect order Lepidoptera, moths and butterflies. Lepidoptera are the second largest group of insects, after beetles, with 180,000 species, which is about 10% of all described living organisms. Lepidoptera are broken into 126 families; two families are butterflies, 17, 000 species, the rest are moths. So nearly 10% of the world's organisms are moths. And yet we generally overlook them.
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big tropical moth, about an inch across |
Sunday, February 2, 2025
Of Brooms and Broom
Sunday, January 26, 2025
The English Yew, Taxus bacata--Ordinary and Fabled
English yews, Taxus bacata, as ornamentals |
Sunday, January 19, 2025
Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, Vancouver, British Columbia
In August, I took a garden tour of Vancouver and Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, with the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. One of the important gardens on the tour was the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver.
pond and willow, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden |
Classical Chinese gardens date back to at least the Southern Song Dynasty (960-1279). They were best developed as the retirement retreats of government bureaucrats. The owner set rocks, plants, and water around his home, to have pleasing and different views in all directions. In southern and coastal China, the house could be quite open, the garden and the indoors linked most of the year.
Sunday, January 12, 2025
Stinging Nettles Part II: FIber, Dye, and Folklore
Stinging nettles, Urtica dioica (nettle family, Urticaceae) have been used for food and medicine for millennia (see previous blog link).
Fiber
They have also been used to make cloth and rope. The individual stalks do not branch and so contain fibers that can be four feet long. These can be separated from the surrounding plant tissue and braided or twined into thread or twine and then used to make items from soft cloth and fish nets to rope. Online videos show people stripping the leaves and outer stem off stinging nettles without gloves, so apparently you can grip it firmly at the base and avoid contact with the stinging hairs. Once the outer layers are removed the long fibers are pliable and can be twisted or braided while fresh or softened further in an alkaline bath. link The older literature mentions weaving nettles into table cloths and sheets. It could be bleached very white. In Germany, nettle fiber was used to supplement cotton into the 20th century. Using stinging nettle for its fibers goes back millennia, but is pretty much a forgotten art in western culture.
stinging nettle, Urtica dioica |
stinging nettle |
Nettles have had no problem gathering folklore because their sting makes them so memorable. For example: Sprinkle nettles around the house to keep out evil. To remove a curse and send it back, stuff a poppet (a small cloth doll) with nettles or carry some in a sachet. Place freshly cut nettles next to the sickbed to aid the patient's recovery. Toss stinging nettles into the fire during a thunderstorm to protect people from lightning. Beating arthritic hands with nettles to make them feel better sounds like folklore, but is a medical treatment of great antiquity.
stinging nettle growing next to wild poppy, Norway |
Nettles appear in a variety of admonitions, for example:
"If you gently touch a nettle,
It'll sting you for your pains;
Grasp it like a lad of mettle,
An' as soft as silk remains."
That is, tackle a difficult problem boldly.
Nettles also have aphorisms: "Though you stroke a nettle ever so kindly, yet it will sting you" and "He that handles a nettle tenderly is soonest stung."
stinging nettle |
Monday, January 6, 2025
Stinging Nettle, Urtica dioica Stinging and Useful
Stinging nettle is a plant that too many of us only criticize. It stings! The tiny venom-filled hairs on the leaves are really painful to brush against. So suburbanites, farmers, hikers, hunters and many others, dislike it; it stings, it makes places that you go around rather than through, nasty plant.
stinging nettle, Urtica dioica |