Gardens in Coastal British Columbia

In early August I took a garden tour with the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum to the cities of Vancouver and Victoria in southwestern British Columbia. Garden tours focus on plants; here are miscellaneous highlights.

a bed of coleus and marigolds

Roadside Wildflowers of Southern Ireland

I took a tour of southern Ireland in July (photo tour link). For me, though, every tour is a plant tour. Here are some of the plants I saw along paths and roads:

blue tufted vetches (Vicia cracca, called bird vetch in the U.S.)
and unknown white flower (fools parsley, Aethusa cynapium?)

Plant Story: Zinnias, American Wildflowers

Zinnias are common and familiar garden flowers, in the genus Zinnia, sunflower family, Asteraceae. They come at the end of the alphabet in lists of garden flowers and indexes. Neither edible nor much of a medicinal, zinnias get little comment beyond "easy to grow."

The more I read about zinnias, the clearer it was they are under-valued.

zinnias, genus Zinnia

A Glimpse of Ireland

  A tour took me across southern Ireland, west to east, in mid July. 

Coast of the Dingle Penninsula, Ireland

Here is a bit of how it looked.

Plant Story- Hoary Vervain, Verbena stricta

Hoary vervain, Verbena stricta, is a native perennial found across much of North America.  

hoary vervain, Verbena stricta, very close up

hoary vervain, Verbena stricta

After Fire, Rocky Mountain Wildflowers

burned forest, Rocky Mountain National Park

The hill ahead was burned. Look at those sad dead trees!

So you take the fork in the trail going away from them.

meadow by burned forest, Rocky Mountain National Park

If you are looking for wildflowers, though, walk through the burned forest. See all that green on the ground?

Polyploidy. Part 5: Patterns of Autopolyploidy

switchgrass, Panicum virgatum, famous autopolyploid

Polyploidy is whole genome duplication, uncommon in animals, but common in plant evolution, between living plant species and in individuals within plant species. (See previous blogs link). Although it is actually a continuum, botanists recognize allopolyploidy, when the genomes that duplicated come from two different species and autopolyploidy when a single genome doubles. This post is about autopolyploids.