Now We Are Six! Blog Anniversary.

water hyacinth (Eichronia crassipes)

"Now We Are Six!" The title is from the Winnie the Pooh series, a phrase that has been with me since early childhood. Today it applies to this blog. Six years! Three hundred twenty two published posts. I had no idea what I was starting, back in February 2013.



Sometimes I have a hard time coming up with an idea; sometimes I am trying to decide which post to upload first.

I have topics I want to write about but don't have the pictures: seeds and fruits, peanut plants, four o'clocks...in midwinter, it is hard to correct that.

It is great fun, this blog. It keeps me researching to get the information right. I have to keep up with stuff I would have let slide, in particular the changes in plant names. And I find myself buying books on topics I had not previously thought about, eastern North American wildflowers, ground covers, and Colonial-era gardeners, for example. Lately I've been studying Spanish because the stories of many North American plants extend into Latin America and I don't want to understand just part of the story before I retell it. Thus, this is a diverse and entertaining project!

Aztec ceremonies used marigold (Tagetes)

Here are links to some of the oldest posts if you missed them:

Plant Confusions: Garden Sage and Sagebrush are Different: link
One is related to mints, the other to sunflowers

garden sage, Salvia officialis (mint family, Lamiaceae)

Plant Story: Not Always Just Plain Vanilla: link

Botany Rules 1: Writing Plant Common Names and English Names:  link

Visiting Northern California: Flowering Agaves! link

                        Agaves are cool!

agaves

Unrelated Plants: The Strange Case of Nasturtium and Watercress link

Botany Rules 4: Who Makes the Rules?  link

   Is the coconut palm in the plant family Palmae or Arecaceae? (Both are correct!)

coconut palm (Cocos nucifera)

Plant Story: Chocolate, Food of the Gods: link

Visiting China: Chinese Landscape Painting and Chinese Landscapes:  link

Huang Shan, Yellow Mountain, China
They painted what they saw.

and, well, 314 more of course.

Snowy Range, southern Wyoming

I have no plans to stop writing. It is a big beautiful world with thousands of plants to appreciate!

My recommendation:

Go!

central Australia, from the bus

Observe!

swallowtail butterfly on mint, Pennsylvania

Enjoy!

Naoshima Island, Japan

Comments and corrections welcome.

Kathy Keeler, A Wandering Botanist

More at awanderingbotanist.com

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