September 27, 2012 - Some leaves, but not autumn leaves

Hardly any autumn leaves yet. Some green leaves caught my eye. My favourite this week has a common name of Wedge-leaved Wattle - Acacia pravissima, a new accession in the alpine garden from se Australia. Nadia was wondering what we'd be seeing in winter; this is supposed to have racemes of yellow flowers in winter and spring, and you can see them starting in the first photo.


We didn't find the tag, but we recognized this as Rhus copallinum by the winged rachis, a feature that appealed to me even before I learned that term. One of this plant's common names is even Winged Sumac.


Rhus typhina, Staghorn Sumac, is often seen around here, though it's not native on the west side of the continent. It's a bit poorly behaved, unless you're trying to stabilize a river bank, in which case it would seem to be very useful. There are supposed to be nine of these. It looked like about 109.


Here's some leaf colour, though I don't think it's autumn colour. You can find a lot of awesome photos of the flowers of Fascicularia bicolor on google, of which mine is not one, but I didn't find any of those plants that were better-looking than this one in the alpine garden.

 

Fascicularia bicolor

Fascicularia bicolor is a highlight of the UBCBG garden right now, not only Alpine Garden. I am glad we didn't miss it!

 

Fascicularia bicolor

Link to Fascicularia bicolor http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/howtogrow/3315977/How-to-grow-Fascicularia-bicolor.html

 

Here are some more photos of the Fascicularia bicolor.