Visiting Taiwan--Flowers, Sheep and Lanterns

My wandering took me back to Taiwan in February 2015. 

The plums and cherries were in bloom, attracting people with cameras. 

The Lunar/Chinese New Year started relatively late compared to the western calendar's year 2015. Consequently February '15 fell within the first month of the New Year and people still had their decorations up while I was there. Traditionally Lunar New Year celebrations included holidays at both the beginning and the end of the month. Since it was the Year of the Sheep (or ram, or goat or lamb or kid...the Chinese term, yáng, is ambiguous) there was ample opportunity for people to make creative displays.

Plant Story--Abronia fragrans, Prairie Snowball, Lovely and Elusive

Abronia fragrans is a plant I would like to grow. So far, no luck!

My common name for Abronia fragrans is prairie snowball, but the USDA website prefers snowball sand verbena and the Flora of North America calls it fragrant white sand-verbena. It is a small perennial plant in the family Nyctaginaceae (the family of four o'clocks and bouganvillea), native to the central U.S. plains (Distribution link).

I first encountered it at the University of Nebraska's Cedar Point Biological Station north of Ogallala, NE. We'd play volleyball after dinner beside the dining hall. About the time we were quitting one evening, I smelled a lovely scent. I circled our sandy playing field and found a scruffy little plant with long tubular white flowers. The scent reminded me of lilacs.

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 Northern Colorado--Devil's Backbone in Late Spring

Go out and notice the flowers!

Devil's Backbone Natural Area is a popular recreation (hiking, bird-watching) area just west of Loveland, Colorado.

Like any natural area--and parks and gardens and agricultural fields as well--what you see depends on when you go. I hiked there on a late May morning, preparing to lead a plant walk. 

Here are a few of the plants I saw:

Visiting Gibraltar part 2 -- A Fascinating Rock

I hadn’t grasped how small and densely populated Gibraltar is: 2.6 square miles with over 30,000 people.

The bay teemed with commerce. 

The residents are packed in along the coast. Since the land rises steeply and Gibraltar has water on three sides driving is tricky. In the residential areas, cars weave through narrow streets. The essential tourist trip to the Top of the Rock is one-way, winding and sometimes motionless, with lines of vans carrying tourists.

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. 

Plant Story--Daphne, Attractive and Fragrant

Winter daphne, also called fragrant daphne, Daphne odora, is a flowering shrub from Asia. It is in the plant family, Thymelaeaceae, which, because most of its members are Old World, is not well known to Americans. You could call the Thymelaeaceae the daphne family or the spurge laurel family. Daphnes are planted as garden shrubs.