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

Garden Thoughts: Who Are All These Plants?

This spring I've been gardening daily. My current Garden Concept is a space of native plants, that welcomes the insects that eat them and the birds that consume the insects. But I like plants, so I have no intention of digging out the peonies or lilacs, even though they support very few native insects. With that complex approach, I took a look at my garden and discovered it was even more complicated.

A Plant's View: Plants in History

"Seriously," said Junior the Christmas cactus, wise in the ways of humans after decades as a houseplant, "What humans call history is just a list of past attempts to capture plants. You tell it as if heads of state or armies that were responsible, but, really, possessing particular plants is what has always motivated humans."

"Huh?" I said. 

Junior, a Christmas cactus

"Where should I start?" they asked. "The key to what you call civilization was agriculture. From that came cities and countries. Tell me that isn't all about plants?"

Scenic Plants

The idea for today's blog was to share photos of plants in dramatic landscapes across the world. I have thousands of photos, but very few are a scenic shot featuring a small plant. Some of that is the problem of focus: either the foreground or the background is in focus. Some is that I never thought to take such pictures. I will try in the future. But, enjoy these: 

A field of mustards in bloom in central Tokyo (likely Brassica rapa planted by the park): 

Growing on Sandy Tropical Beaches

beach in Hawaii

Our world has more ocean than land, so there are vast coastlines. I live in the center of the second-largest continent, which puts me nearly as far from a coastline as is possible. So of course I'm enchanted by beaches.

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.

Visiting Ontario, Canada--Plants of Toronto

In 2017, Canada is celebrating its 150th anniversary. I took a tour of Toronto with Road Scholar link

Toronto is not only the city with the largest population in Canada (2.7 million people), but it is the 4th largest city in North America, after Mexico City, New York, and Los Angeles. Greater Toronto has 7 million people. It sits along the north edge of Lake Ontario, so for Canada it is in the far south. Lake effects from the Great Lakes keep Toronto's climate mild, moist and unpredictable.

For me it is always a botanic tour, so here is a brief look at Toronto's plants.

Botanist Visiting London--in December

Two years ago I was in London in the first half of December. Looking back at the photos, I'm struck by the contrast to Colorado at the same time of year.

London, December

northern Colorado, December

London is well north of Denver, any map will show you that. Yet, the ocean effects prevail: it was much warmer than the Colorado we'd left behind. Not only was it warmer, I saw many plants that we cannot grow in Colorado.

Visiting Norway--So Scenic! and more

Norway isn't just fjords. It has many miles of scenic coastline and islands, as in the video.

But also beautiful fjords (below). A fjord is a long deep canyon filled with seawater. Most were carved by glaciers. Fjords are rare around the world, the famous ones are in found in Norway, New Zealand, Chile, Canada, Alaska and Greenland.

  

Visiting Singapore--Gardens by the Bay

We stood astonished. Huge metal "trees."  This was Singapore. On the Equator, with lush plants but also industrialized and high-tech. So: a tree-like metal framework for tropical vines.

   
Here is how they looked from a distance, from a second or third story walkway.

Visiting Hawaii--Hawaiian Diversity

Hawaii!

Hawaii is an island chain in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, about as far from a continent as you can be on our earth. The islands were never part of a continent, they were created by a mid-Pacific volcanic hot spot forcing lava up to toward the surface. The ocean is 19,000 feet deep in that area, but the push from below is persistent: it built islands that not only emerged above the ocean surface but that reach heights of more than 13,000'. The two tall volcanoes on the Big Island, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, are both taller than Mt. Everest (29,005') if you count from the sea floor (30,085 and 30,196' respectively.)

That combination of history and isolation makes Hawaii the hardest place for plants and animals to colonize. Botanists estimate that only 290 plants ever made it on their own. They have to have survived drifting in floating debris for weeks, or clung as living seeds to the feet of birds on a long-distance flight or, in the case of the tiny spores of ferns, ridden a storm wind and landed not in the sea but on a tiny bit of land.

Visiting Alberta--Cattail Marshes and Flyways

Big Lake, Alberta

Winter is settling in in Colorado. Some of our Canada geese have gone south, but others still sweep by overhead.

On the edge of Edmonton, Alberta, 1000 miles north of us, sits Big Lake, in the Lois Hole Centennial Provincial Park. (links: Prov.Park  Big Lake Support Soc. ) The lake is a critically important spot for birds migrating across North America.

Remembering visiting it in midsummer, I am reminded that neither plants nor wildfowl value the same things about places that people do.

Plant Story--Peas, Pisum sativum

The three faces of peas--fresh peas, dried peas, and edible-pod peas--are different enough that it is hard remembering they are all the same thing, peas, Pisum sativum (pea family, Fabaceae).

Mostly, when we say "peas" today, we are thinking of shelling peas (garden peas, English peas) especially ones that have been frozen, since peas freeze really well and season for fresh peas is short.

Fresh shelled peas

But it was because they could be dried and stored that peas were one of the very first plants domesticated in the Middle East.

Visiting Taiwan--Wild is Close By

Taiwan is a small and densely populated island (link), but it has high mountains in the center and those mountains are so rugged that that they remain wild. Because it is a small island, access to wild Taiwan is surprisingly easy. You can, for example, take a city bus from downtown Taipei, Taiwan's capital, to Yangmingshan Park, hike for the afternoon and take the bus back to the city center, or start from there on a backpack adventure through the mountains of central Taiwan.

Visiting Cinque Terre on the Coast of Italy

Cinque Terre, Italy 

Four years ago I took a hiking tour of Cinque Terre and Tuscany in Italy with Backroads. Hiking tours range from extremely strenuous to modest. Backroads had options for a variety of walkers. My husband and I had gotten into shape but mostly we were the laggards. Where I took the van the last mile, others in the group found an extra loop to walk. An important lesson I learned from that tour was that being in good enough shape to hike the distance is not sufficient: I needed to be better than that, fit enough to enjoy the walking. 

Despite the discomfort of being behind almost everyone, I had a terrific experience.

I had not been to Italy, so the landscapes with olive trees or Lombardy poplars were enchanting. Wow! it looks like pictures I've seen!

Visiting Philadelphia--Mount Cuba Center

Gardening with natives, East Coast style.

On a Road Scholar tour of gardens of the Philadelphia area, we visited Mount Cuba Center. Located in Hockessin, Delaware, the site was the home and gardens of Mr. and Mrs. Lamott du Pont Copeland. Purchased over 70 years ago, the Copelands gradually transformed their home on the top of Mt. Cuba into sweeping vistas, beautiful woods and meadows and luscious gardens. Not only devoted to beauty, the Mt. Cuba Center has become dedicated to promoting gardening and landscaping with native plants. 

Plant Story -- Iris, All the Colors of the Rainbow

Iris is a common garden plant all around the world.

The genus Iris, in the iris family, Iridaceae, has about 280 species, distributed all around the Northern Hemisphere, from Alaska eastward to Japan. People have been attracted to iris for a very long time--Pharoh Thutmose III had irises that he brought back from his conquest of Syria (1479 BC) painted on his tomb. 

Visiting Gibraltar--At the End of the Mediterranean

Gibraltar! A name of adventure. I had read of it in many novels; now I was eager to see it for myself.  Not only was there The Rock, but I also found monkeys, coastal plants and caves.

Gibraltar is, in the words of Wikipedia a "monolithic limestone promontory."  On the southern edge of Europe, it protrudes south into the Mediterranean, creating the spot where the passage from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic is the narrrowest. 

Visiting San Francisco -- Asian Influences

I recently wrote about Taiwan and Singapore as places to enjoy Chinese New Year celebrations. That made me think of places closer to home with rich Asian traditions--in particular, San Francisco. 

I lived in San Francisco for part of a year and across the Bay in Berkeley and Oakland for five. I have visited frequently since. I'm not particularly fond of cities, but I'm fond of San Francisco.

Visiting Taiwan--Taroko Gorge

Taiwan is an island off the coast of Asia, shaped, they say, like a sweet potato. (map). The Tropic of Capricorn runs through it about 2/3 of the way south, so the northern part of Taiwan is subtropical and the south in the tropics. A chain of mountains fills the center of Taiwan, high enough and rugged enough that they are quite wild. 

On the east (Pacific) side of the island, just north of the middle of Taiwan, Taroko Gorge brings water from the mountains down to the ocean. It is spectacular.

I was back in Taiwan in March 2015 on a tour with China Span led by photographer Keren Su. We drove across Taiwan at Toroko Gorge.