Ever wonder what a growing pineapple looks like? They’re actually giant bromeliads! This pineapple (Ananas comosus) was obviously grown in a greenhouse, but they’re usually grown in fields in tropical areas.
Pineapples are native to South America, and because of their preferred climate conditions,were extremely difficult to grow in Europe for a long time. They were a symbol of wealth and hospitality, as they were used by the ultrawealthy as decorations, which led to their incorporation into stonework. The fibers of pineapple leaves have also been used to make textiles, most notably in the Philippines.
Winter makes finding weeds for Wednesday a bit hard, but spring will be here soon, and with it spring weeds like this Veronica persica,Persian speedwell. This lawn weed is originally from continental Eurasia, but has spread to North America, the British Isles, Australia, and eastern Asia, likely through contaminated seed. Also pictured here is a little bit of Lamium amplexicaule, henbit deadnettle, another lawn weed.
A venomous lizard, a rare iguana, and a cactus “tree”.
Check out this weird relationship among two of the planet’s rarest and most endangered reptiles and this cactus.
Thinking about Gila monsters and beaded lizards as emblems, icons of the Pacific coast of Mexico. How these unique, enchanting, superlative, venomous lizards are so closely associated with the landscapes along the Pacific between the Mojave Desert and the mountains of Guatemala.
It turns out that there have been 2 more unique species of Gila monster/beaded lizard hiding in plain sight. (Subspecies which are now technically considered to be unique species.) 2 “new” Gila monsters. One of theses lives in the tropical dry forest and scrub of the Motagua Valley, where organ pipe cactus and thornscrub give this Guatemalan habitat a look kinda like the Sonoran Desert. Here lives the Motagua beaded lizard, one of the rarest and most endangered reptiles on the planet. The other “new” species is the Chiapan beaded lizard. Look at this venomous lizard and its unique habitat in the tropical mountains of Chiapas:
And one of the iconic creatures of this imaginative coast: Gila monsters. Since Linnaean taxonomic classification is a loose and ever-changing and fallible way to attempt to categorize living things, let’s just say that beaded lizards are similar enough that I just consider them, basically, to be Gila monsters. All together, there are 6 subspecies, 6 variations, of these venomous lizards. And there are two of these venomous lizards that don’t really get talked about too much despite their extra-cool lifestyles. They were recently determined to be unique species.
Landscapes can be perceived as the product of the human imagination, right? I adore the Pacific Rim, but I especially love the Pacific coast of the Americas. The edge of the world. Globally-unique Mediterranean-climate chaparral of both California and Chile. The planet’s most extensive temperate rainforests in both the Pacific Northwest and Valdivia. The Sonoran Desert, the vibrant sea of the Gulf of California, tropical mountains of Chiapas, the fog oases of the Atacama Desert, volcanoes, the fjordlands and “miniature forests” of the Magellanic region. Run away from Europe, try to escape the panopticon of industrial Europe and its history, go as far west as you can, and you reach the Pacific coast of the Americas.
Beyond this coast? The vast Pacific ocean, nearly boundless seas, the tropical South Pacific, Aotearoa. You could leave the coast of Sonora and sail without encountering human beings or land until you reached the frozen world of Antarctica.
Here be dragons, or whatever.
Here’s where the “dragons” live. Distribution map of the Gila monsters that I made using “working-class GIS” (M!crosoft Paint):
Check it out, from north to south.
Heloderma suspectum cinctum. The “banded Gila monster”, though I prefer to think of it with a more ecologically meaningful name like the “Mojave Desert Gila Monster” or “Colorado River Gila monster”. Lives along the Colorado River near the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas.
Heloderma suspectum suspectum. The “reticulate Gila monster”, though I prefer the more ecologically meaningful name “Sonoran Desert Gila monster”, since its distribution range is essentially an outline of the Sonoran Desert bioregion.
Heloderma horridum exasperatum. The “Rio Fuerte beaded lizard”, though I prefer to think of it as the “Sinaloan beaded lizard” or “Sinaloan thornscrub beaded lizard”.
Heloderma horridum horridum. The “Mexican beaded lizard”.
Heloderma alvarezi. The “Chiapan beaded lizard” which only lives in a small/limited range in the mountains of Chiapas.
And finally.
Heloderma charlesbogerti. The “Guatemalan beaded lizard” or “Motagua beaded lizard” of the Motagua Valley, critically endangered.
Less than 200 survive in the wild. One of the rarest and most endangered reptiles on the planet.
And get this. For food, it relies on the eggs of the Motagua spiny-tailed iguana. The Motagua spiny-tailed iguana is itself also highly endangered, with less than 2,500 surviving animals, and also only endemic to this one single valley.
That’s two lizards, found nowhere else, in an intimate relationship, nearly extinct.
But that’s not all. For food, the Motagua spiny-tailed iguana itself relies on the fruit of several cactus species. One is Pereskia lychnidiflora. Pereskia is one of the two only known genus/genera of cactus where the cactus essentially produces leaves.
Making this cactus a “tree”.
And the “tree” spreads itself thanks to the iguana’s fruit consumption.
I’ve complained over and over about how I missed having the time to write and share plant stuff, but it feels so odd I’m now back at it only because we’re on quarantine, and suddenly have ALL the time I could possibly need.
This said, I thought I’d go on with the true blue flowers series I started many moons ago, so here you have two plants I bought last summer in the garden centre where I work. They are unrelated, but the colour of their flowers matched in a lovely way.
The first is Salvia patens ‘Cambridge Blue’, or gentian sage, a gorgeous cultivar of the Mexican herbaceous perennial species. It flowers profusely through summer well into autumn forming a neat, aromatic clump and it’s best treated like a dahlia, lifting the fleshy tuberous root system before winter and storing it away from hard frost. Bees obviously love the large lipped flowers.
The second is Delphinium grandiflorum ‘Summer Blues’, or Siberian larkspur, a short-lived herbaceous perennial much different from the large and sturdy larkspurs part of the D. elatum species. It doesn’t grow much taller than 30 or 40 cm and both foliage and flowers are quite dainty, but extremely vibrant. The blossoms, opening over several weeks through summer, look as if they had been painted with watercolours and go on to produce a good number of seeds to ensure self-sowing.
It’s hard to walk by banks covered in common nettle without noticing this fiery and gruesome rust fungus taking hold of and deforming the plant’s limbs.
It’s best described as a species complex with a life cycle which might alternate between two hosts- in the British Isles often a nettle (U. dioica or U. urens) and a sedge (mostly Carex sp.), but its ‘sub-species’ can also be found on Aster and Ribes.
You know I love blue flowers, but you might have not noticed how uncommon ‘true blue’ flowers actually are in nature. In the animal world, the presence of this colour is often just an optical effect caused by how light is absorbed and refracts in particular structures. In plants, however, different shades of real blue are the result of chemical changes that alter the red and purple anthocyanin pigments present in a large variety of species.
Some plant families though, seem to have mastered this prodigious alchemical feat and produced a good variety of sky-coloured species, which have been further diversified artificially in as many cultivars. Probably the most prominent of these families, the Boraginaceae has gifted us with some of the most common blue wildlfowers you could encounter in temperate areas, and plenty of garden ornamental plants.
In the photos above you can see members of this family currently blooming at my veg plot and, if you look closely, you can see how the flower buds on all these plants look pink, but the pigments start changing as they open to reveal different shades of true blue:
-Myosotis scorpioides, water forget-me-not: herbaceous perennial
-Myosotis arvensis, field forget-me-not: herbaceous annual or short-lived perennial
Now check back in a few years please, I’m on my way to holding the national collection of Boraginaceae and the largest variety of blue flowers in one garden ;)
Since I’ve been behind, so, so behind with sharing photos of my plot, here’s a collection of spring flowers, with more to come as they couldn’t all fit in a post.
I will be writing more specifically about some of the plants I’ve grown, but for the moment I still have some work to do as I might have entered the plot into a local gardening contest to be judged soon…stay tuned!
Lesser periwinkle was another of the groundcover species I found in the lightly shaded dry ditch running along a row of Lombardy poplars (Populus nigra ‘Italica’) edging a field.
This creeping evergreen plant native to much of Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean region is a beauty in the spring and early summer months, with its propeller-shaped flowers in a particular shade of violet-blue -which has given the name to the periwinkle colour- poking through the dark, leathery foliage.
Although its vigorous habit and ability to thrive in most soils can make it an invasive species in the wrong place, it is a really valuable ornamental plant and numerous cultivars have been selected. Here are three currently in bloom at the garden centre where I work:
V. minor ‘Ralph Shugert’, named after the Michigan nurseryman who selected it, has large flowers and variegated foliage, with a thin creamy-yellow edge and veining. Some shoots grow completely albino.
V. minor ‘Illumination’, with foliage splashed with chartreuse-yellow, often taking the entire centre of the leaf. A good groundcover plant to brighten up a shadier corner where not much else grows well.
V. minor ‘Atropurpurea’, as the name suggests, produces flowers in a darker, warmer shade of purple contrasting well with the glossy green foliage.
I have already written about the delicate wood anemone before, but never about the ever so common purple dead-nettle: I generally try to single plants out for photos, but couldn’t walk away from this gorgeous combination.
On the sloping side of a dry irrigation ditch, in the dappled shade of a row of tall trees, the anemone’s dissected foliage was covering the ground in a dense mat, out of which were poking the bright pink lipped flowers of the dead-nettle.
The reason why this herbaceous perennial bears that common name is due to the superficial similarity between its leaves and those of the unrelated stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), however its hairs won’t cause any harm. The top part of the plant is generally a rich burgundy-purple colour, hence the other part of the common name and the species name, but it is a variable plant and looks just green when growing in a more shady position, as in these photos.
It is often considered an undesirable plant in a garden setting, some might call it a “weed”, but I let it grow in my allotment for two main reasons. It’s in bloom from early spring often until late autumn, sometimes even longer in a sheltered position, and its flowers are loved by pollinators, especially bumblebees. Its young shoots are also edible and it’s a pot herb with an interesting flavour, so I see it as a bonus leaf vegetable.
One of the wildflowers I strongly associate with my childhood and learnt to recognise early, I hadn’t seen so much greater celandine in full bloom in years, but probably I just visit home, in Italy, too late in the summer to enjoy the full show.
This herbaceous perennial from the poppy family, native to the Mediterranean, temperate Europe and Western Asia, has been known and used for its medicinal properties since antiquity, and for that reason it was introduced in many areas outside of its natural range. Although reportedly naturalised around settlements, I still have to spot it here up north in Scotland.
Due to its ability to quickly colonise disturbed sites and the edge of woodland, it can prove rather invasive after introduction. For instance, It seems to be present throughout the north-eastern portion of the US and listed as invasive in Wisconsin.
One thing I vividly remember learning as a kid is the traditional use of its yellow latex to “burn” warts and skin cancer and to thin calluses. Please don’t try it though, the latex is an irritant and can cause allergic reactions, while the whole plant is mildly toxic.
However common and widespreadbugle might be across Europe and the British Isles, I don’t recall ever seeing it in the wild before finding three colonies on the edge of a field near my hometown in northern Italy, and I would remember because I just love its dense racemes of blue flowers. Due to its creeping habit and small leaves, it’s definitely easy to miss unless in bloom though.
It’s evergreen, forms a dense groundcover, flowers beautifully for a few months attracting wildlife and it’s extremely tolerant of full shade and moist ground, so I’ve lost count of the times I’ve invited customers to try it in difficult, dark spots where little else would thrive. Here below are a couple of common cultivars currently in bloom at the garden centre where I work:
A. reptans “Braunherz” has dark, purply foliage and stems which provide amazing contrast to the flowers. Seems to do well even with prolonged, hard frost and in full sun. I have some growing at my allotment and it’s just beginning to flower.
A. reptans “Burgungy Glow” has foliage variegated in cream and pink, with dark, bluish flower stems. Not as tolerant of the extremes, as often happens with variegated varieties. The flower spikes make me think of a picture to which the “invert” filter has been applied, as if the flowers should actually be yellow and the foliage bluish-green, but I’ll never complain about a blue flower!
Important prerequisite to this post: I’m not a huge fan of the fancy colours and extravagant patterns of primroses bred and selected for bedding schemes, and much prefer the humble and unassuming Primula vulgaris I sometimes find on the hills. The few you’ve seen in my allotment were all saved from the skip at work for the sole purpose of providing early foragers with some food.
BUT, certain cultivars are indeed striking in their oddity and I can’t help looking at them as interesting weirdos. Here are some I thought would be worth mentioning:
-Primula ‘Marli Candy Corn’. Simple enough you might call it elegant, it reminds me of some of my favourite roses. An outsider in this group.
-Primula ‘Zebra Blue’. Tacky, but it’s blue, white and yellow, my favourite colour combination.
-Primula ‘Sirococco Red Flame’. Even tackier. All the primulas in the Sirococco series are just as unique, but this one makes me think of a gorgeous sunset on the beach.
-Primula ‘Belarina Valentine’. A cheaper, living alternative to a bunch of red roses. Nothing less, nothing more.
Note: I do not endorse BigHort -hope I can use your term without paying royalties @plantanarchy ;)- and the objectification of plants.
MySymphoricarpos postwas flagged as explicit by the Tumblr algorithm…I wonder why…
IS THIS MORE ACCEPTABLE @staff??? Please do let me know, and I’ll proceed with preserving the modesty of all the female-presenting berries featured on my blog!
