Visiting China--Shanghai Scenes

Almost every tour of China goes to Shanghai. With 24 million people, it is China's largest city and #9 in the world. If you count only cities and not their suburbs, it is the biggest city in the world. It grew more than 10% each year over most of the last 20 years.

Some Changes at A Wandering Botanist

I recently started blogging for Mother Earth Living link 's Herbal Living section https://herbs.motherearthliving.com

Plant Story--Big bluestem, Andropogon gerardii, Very Successful

Big bluestem in a Kansas tallgrass prairie

Big bluestem, Andropogon gerardii (grass family Poaceae), was once the most common plant across the whole center of the United States because it was the dominant grass of the tallgrass prairie. Alas, that same region grows wonderful corn, so the tallgrass prairie is 99% gone, and big bluestem is no longer very common.

It remains an important forage grass. The new shoots are very nutritious and very attractive to cattle. Where cattle have enough space, big bluestem does well. If the pasture is small, they preferentially graze it until none is left. Range mangers try to maintain big bluestem or reseed with it.

Plant Story--Broom Snakeweed, Gutierrezia sarothrae, Fall Gold

It's a pretty plant. Its name is a mouthful, broom snakeweed, Gutierrezia sarothrae, sunflower family, Asteraceae.

Denver Area--Spectacular Native Plants

The Garden Bloggers Fling, a conference of people who blog about gardens, was in Denver in June 2019. What do garden bloggers do at a conference? Look at gardens! The Denver area is hot in summer, cold in winter, and dry all the time. Most standard East Coast garden plants do not do well, unless protected and watered. Plants native to the region do not need the same care. Here is a gallery of beautiful natives I saw in gardens in northern Colorado during the Fling.

blanket flower, Gaillardia

Garden Bloggers Fling 2019--Loveland and Fort Collins

Garden Bloggers take lots of pictures. These of plantings of Colorado
native plants at High Plains Environmental Center in Loveland

The Garden Bloggers Fling is an conference of garden bloggers. Each year they gather to visit gardens. I went in 2017 and this year, when the conference was in greater Denver,  June 13-16, 2019. My summer has been so busy I haven't written about it.