Plant Story--Creeping Hollygrape, Berberis repens

It is spreading all over my yard, but I can't get its name right.

I'm used to calling it Oregon grape, but in fact, the one on the Front Range in Colorado is not really Oregon grape. The usual Oregon grape is Berberis aquifolia. It is Berberis repens that is common in Colorado. Common names for this plant include creeping hollygrape, creeping barberry, creeping mahonia, and creeping Oregon grape.

Plant Story--Coral Trees, the Erythrina species

Pretty red flowers on a small tree, the flowers upturned or curved like crescents. Called coral trees or coral bean, the genus is Erythrina in the pea family, Fabaceae, and they are found all around the tropical world.

My most recent encounter with a coral tree was with Erythrina crista-galli, the cockspur coral tree (crista-galli is Latin for cock's comb) in Argentina, where, called ceibo, it is the national flower. Cockspur coral tree is native to northern Argentina and nearby areas in Paraguay, Uruguay and southern Brazil. It is the national flower of Uruguay, as well.

Which tells you how spectacular the cockspur coral tree is in flower.

Visiting San Diego, California--Winter Escape

San Diego is at the southern end of California: you can see Mexico easily. Given that location, it has mild southern winters. It is also a very dry climate since southern California is almost desert. What rain they get falls in the winter. All of which makes a "Mediterranean climate," very like the climate of southern Italy and Spain.

And a terrific place to escape to in winter.

Observing Leaves

Flowers are showy and essential for reproduction by their plants, but leaves contain the photosynthetic aparatus and are the source of food that plants self-generate. Leaves are essential to the world's economy, providing the basic materials that feed both plants and animals. Of course there are other synthetic pathways and some stems are photosynthetic, but far and away most of the energy from the sun is captured by leaves and turned into plant biomass, which is subsequently eaten by just about everything.

Plant Story--A Tribute to Pansies, Viola species

Pansies are so commonly planted as to seem uninteresting. Indeed, I have surprisingly few photos of pansies in my large collection of photographs that were taken just to show a pansy.

But why are they so widely planted?  First, they're bright colored. Not only bright-colored, they come in colors including nearly black, purple, blue, red, yellow and white and combinations of those.

Visiting Patagonia--A Glipse of Torres del Paine, Chile

Patagonia refers to the southern part of South America, but it is a big area including about half (the southern half) of Argentina and Chile. I have only seen the southern tip, Tierra del Fuego, the Beagle Channel and Torres del Paine National Park in Chile.

Fifth Anniversary

oranges

Today week marks the fifth anniversary of this blog. February 4, 2013 I published the first post. For five years, I have added a new post weekly. Blogspot counts this as the 269th post, because very occasionally I had two in a week but never missed a week.