Plant Story: the Gorgeous Scarlet Globemallow, Sphaeralcea coccinea

Scarlet globemallow, Sphaeralcea coccinea, is a small native mallow of disturbed sites of the western half of the United States and Canada. It has bright orange flowers--nearly red in some areas--and rather gray-green, deeply divided (easily recognized) leaves.

Scarlet globe mallow, Sphaeralcea coccinea

Tenth Anniversary!

I started this blog in February 2013. I have uploaded a post every week since then, 521 posts. The actual total is 532, because once in a while I added a mid-week post. In that decade I wrote books about conspicuous plants (listed below), gave talks about plants and travel, and, last month, published an historical novel about travel, featuring plants (see below). I learned a lot about writing, publishing, and projectors. I aspired to being an expert on a tour and just before covid, got to try it. Then, of course, I experienced staying in during the pandemic and, lately, reestablishing pre-pandemic activities. My thinking about plants went from considering all plants cool to believing we should make a real effort to grow plants native to our local area to preserve them and the animals that feed on them, which discourages growing nonnative plants. 

 In 2013 I saw the Caribbean for the first time.