Travel--Plants of Conwy Castle

I live in Colorado. Castles are not a part of my landscape. So of course I was fascinated by the plants that had colonized the walls of Conwy Castle.

View of Conwy Castle

Plant Story--The Common Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale

The dandelion is a plant everybody knows. That is quite a distinction since so many people are oblivious to the plants around them. And because dandelions are not particularly distinctive. There are many plants with similar yellow flowers and others with a puff-ball seed head. It is not the dandelion's  unique shapes that make it so widely recognized, but rather because it is so common.

common dandelion, Taraxacum officinale
seen in Seattle, Washington

Guanella Pass in the Rocky Mountains

Winter enhances memories of summer. Here is a July visit to Guanella Pass, in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado. 

Rocky Mountains, central Colorado, July

Revisiting the Seedlings of the Double Coconut, Lodoicea maldivica, in Honolulu

In April, 2018, I visited the Foster Botanical Garden in Honolulu and was delighted to see a double coconut, Lodoicea maldivica, (palm family Aracaceae) growing there. The double coconut, also called the Seychelles coconut, sea coconut, and coco de mer, has the largest seed in the world. It is endemic to two islands Seychelles, small islands in the Indian Ocean. At the time, the Foster Garden was proudly displaying seeds their double coconut had produced.The plants are rare and they are dioecious so a "male" and "female" plant are needed for reproduction.The Seychelles is trying to preserve and increase the wild populations so is not sharing seeds. To pollinate their female palm, Hawaiian botanists brought pollen from Singapore, where there is a male plant. (Blog posts from that visit the plant; getting the seeds. )

Seed of double coconut, Lodoicea maldivica,
largest seed in the world, Foster Garden 2018

Plant Story--Beautiful Showy Milkweed, Asclepias speciosa

A few decades ago, milkweeds (genus Asclepias) were simply common native plants that could be poisonous to livestock, so they were ignored or eliminated. Then monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) populations were found to have decreased dramatically. Looking for causes, ecologists pointed to land development eliminating milkweeds, which are the only food plant of monarch caterpillars. Trying to help, people all over have been planting milkweeds for the monarchs. 

Showy milkweed, Asclepias speciosa with a monarch butterfly
perched on it

For people living in Eastern North America, common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) was the easiest milkweed to find and grow and it is a monarch magnet. In the West, though, common milkweed is not native. It is replaced by showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa), which grows in many of the same habitats and looks quite similar. Over the last decade, western nurseries and gardeners have explained this and made showy milkweed seeds and plants available. Today you can google all kinds of information about showy milkweed (link, link, link and many more). What can I possibly write? I will draw some aspects of the wild plants to your attention.

Ruderals in Manchester, England

 I flew into Manchester England for the start of a tour of Wales. It was September and I wondered whether any plants were still flowering. Awaiting the tour, I stayed at a hotel near the Manchester Airport, a very urban area. It was cloudy with intermittent rain. Nevertheless, I became restless and went out to look for plants (to "botanize"). 

willowherb, Epilobium

Disambiguation of Some Common Plant Names

I think the word disambiguation is cute. It means to remove uncertainty, and in this context and Google's, to point out when two different things have the same name and clarify which is which. Scientific names were created to address this problem in plants and animals, but not everyone understands this and certainly not everyone uses scientific names. 

Below are disambiguations for sage, hemlock, bergamot, and yam. (More in future posts)

sagebrush, Artemisia is not the same as culinary sage, Salvia