After trudging through much of the garden yesterday in an attempt to photograph a scene that demonstrated the snowfall, I ended up liking this one the best. Walking around the garden was no easy task, as I blazed a few trails, climbed over and under snow-laden trees across paths and occasionally had to reroute to where there are no paths. For those of you familiar with the garden, you'll recognize the irony – this photograph was taken from the boardwalk at the garden's entrance, no more than forty steps from my office.

Damage to the plant collections throughout the garden was, in a word, extensive. Two of the Larix griffithii are devastated, one uprooted from the ground entirely and the other with its trunk broken about 3m off the ground (the plant having had a height of about 10m). A precious Sinojackia looks as if it exploded. I easily counted a dozen broken trees and shrubs in the Asian Garden, and I didn't venture very far.

I did revisit a few plants I've previously shown on BPotD to take a photograph for comparison's sake – one of these I've posted as a comment in the entry on Acer carpinifolium.

One last anecdote: I couldn't stand in the spot where I took the photographs of the Callitriche stagnalis. Usually, that path skirts under 15cm (6in) diameter willow trunks leaning about 2.5m (8ft) off the ground. Yesterday, those trunks were at knee-level. I doubt the willows are damaged, as they tend to be very flexible, but it was jarring to see.

A thank you to “leafdesigner” of Battle Ground, Washington for again submitting both photograph and text for today's photograph of a toothed jelly fungus (via the BPotD Submissions Forum). Much appreciated!

leafdesigner writes:

“Although these dainty mushrooms (average size about 3-5 cm high by about as broad) resemble the true toothed fungi (family Hydnaceae), they belong to an unrelated mushroom family (Exidiaceae). If you're paying attention to the ground as you walk through the woods, you'll find them perched on fallen sticks and twigs. Like the tooth fungi, they bear their spores on tooth-like projections on the underside of the cap. However, tooth fungi are usually larger and tougher. The species epithet gelatinosum refers to the jelly-like flesh. Most books list it as edible, but without much substance or flavor.”

I'll add two links to what leafdesigner wrote above: Pseudohydnum gelatinosum from the ever-entertaining Michael Kuo and Pseudohydnum gelatinosum from MykoWeb.

Art resource link: From the Big House, to the Outhouse, an article by Pete Myers about “living a happier life as an artist, without the chains of criticism riding up one's shorts and ruining one's life adventure”. Via The Luminous Landscape.

Thanks to an early (and heavy) snowfall in Vancouver, snow-laden trees broke powerlines supplying the UBC campus somewhere around 3 AM local time on November 27. No power, no functioning web server! When power was restored yesterday at 5 PM, the server also didn't restart automatically as it should due to a failure of an external component. It had to wait to be restarted manually, so that's why the web site came back online today at 8 AM. C'est la vie!

Today's duotone image was taken in the Asian Garden on the day before the snow started falling, last Friday. Redvein enkianthus was previously featured on Botany Photo of the Day (May 13, 2005), so do visit that entry if you'd like to see the flowers of the plant.

If you're considering growing the plant, reading the information on the Kemper Center for Home Gardening would be helpful. For an even more detailed horticultural examination of the plant, Washington State University's Extension Service has a Plant of the Month entry for Enkianthus campanulatus.

One kind of folk taxonomy divides plants into three groups: plants we adore, plants we abhor and plants we ignore. Pond water-starwort is surely in the third group, along with many other little-acknowledged freshwater aquatic plants. Still, admirers exist.

One example: when Richard Lansdown, the world expert on Callitriche species, visited UBC Botanical Garden earlier this year, he called this particular variant of Callitriche stagnalis the most beautiful he's ever seen. Unfortunately, the information about whether this variant is from a local population or “wild” collected elsewhere in British Columbia (it is not native to BC, hence the “wild”) was lost when the curator of the Native Garden vanished more than a decade ago.

A second example of admiration: the name Callitriche means “beautiful hair”, which, according to the Jepson Manual entry, is a reference to its slender stems.

For more information on pond water-starwort, visit the Skye Flora page on Callitriche stagnalis. If you would like to learn more broadly about how some species of plants have evolved to survive underwater, I recommend visiting the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden's page on freshwater aquatic plants; it discusses many aspects of the specialized adaptations required for life in a medium different than air.

On a different tack, the garden is venturing into e-commerce territory with the opening of the UBC Botanical Garden Cafepress Store. The store includes a section for Botany Photo of the Day images; in addition to the existing 2007 calendar, I'll be adding cards and prints over the next week. I'll post more information about the store in the next couple of days, too.

Botany resource link: The island of Rum was made (botanically) infamous when it was discovered to be the site of botanical fraud. If you haven't read the book “A Rum Affair” (and I'll admit that I haven't), you can learn more about this story from the BBC or Watsonia, the journal of the Botanical Society of the British Isles.

A special thank you to those who commented on yesterday's photograph. I appreciate the gist of what you've expressed, and I'll not forget or ignore it. I'm keeping my word re: today's photograph though, as I could use a bit of colour myself. We're likely to have the coldest temperature we've had in a long while in Vancouver in the next couple days, so it's particularly delicious (and escapist) to revisit summertime now. Today's photograph was taken half a revolution ago.

Paeonia peregrina seems to have a few English common names. Balkan peony is a reference to its distributional range in southeastern Europe and Turkey. Dr. Allan Armitage calls it “poison peony” in his set of horticultural stock images, but that name doesn't appear elsewhere online. Personally, I'd opt to use a translation of the epithet peregrina to create the common name, which doesn't seem to have been done in English. This seems to have been the practice in French, though: pivoine étrangère, or strange peony. Such a common name would demand an explanation of why this particular species was considered strange or foreign to botanists of the time. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer today, but I'll check some reference works tomorrow to see if I can figure it out.

Photographs of the foliage and fully open flowers are available from both the Pacific Bulb Society and Floral Images.

Lastly, a head's up. I've decided to take a “vacation” from BPotD between December 16 and January 14. Although there will still be a daily photograph, two things will be different: 1) the photographs will be a series of abstracts and 2) I am going to post without scientific comment (the vacation part). Many of the abstracts have literal counterparts previously featured on BPotD, so I will reference those if available. If you're not a fan of abstracts, I hope you'll be able to be patient until mid-January.

A small vignette from yesterday afternoon in the BC Native Garden. I promise tomorrow's photograph will be of a colourful flower.

Send some warm thoughts to Cliff aka The Marmot@Flickr, since he's shared this photograph (original image) with us via the Flickr BPotD Group Pool. Cliff's organized a Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden Flickr set, if you're interested in seeing other images from RSABG. Thanks Cliff!

Calflora.net points out that fascicularis means bundled, referring to the attachment of leaves to the stem. Cliff's photograph gives a sense of this, though it is perhaps more clear in the series of photographs accompanying Burke Museum's page on Asclepias fascicularis. If you browse these photographs, you'll note that more than two leaves are attached at each node of the stem, a leaf arrangement termed whorled. This explains one of the common names of this species, Mexican whorled milkweed, though narrow-leaved milkweed is also used.

To learn more about this western US and northwest Mexico native, visit the photo database at Calphotos (Asclepias fascicularis search) or read a description of the plant on Calflora.net's page on narrow-leaved milkweed.

Photography resource link: The Landscapist is “intended to showcase the landscape photography of photographers who have moved beyond the pretty picture and for whom photography is more than entertainment”. Not your typical photo weblog!

How does one take a good photograph of a plant that is a large creeping mat? In thirty years, this sprawling wirevine (or creeping pohuehue) has covered an area of more than 9 m² (over 97 sq. ft.!) in the Australasian section of the Alpine Garden. I will need to consider how to take a photograph that captures the full extent and habit of the plant to share later, but in the meantime, I have these closeups. At the least, you'll have an idea of its rich autumn colour in scattered shade.

Since there is little to judge scale with in the photographs, I need to mention that the upright stems reach only 5cm (2in.) or so high. These stems are densely packed together (hence the term mat). In the first photograph, I estimate three to four thousand stems are present in the frame.

The Plants for a Future database notes the edibility of the fruit of this Australian and New Zealand native, while a description of the plant is available from the New South Wales Flora Online: Muehlenbeckia axillaris.

Lastly, if I were to title the first photograph, I'd call it “Lightfall”, since it reminds me of a waterfall of light.

Today's photograph was submitted by Martin LaBar of southern California South Carolina (aka Martin LaBar@Flickr (original image | Flickr BPotD Group Pool). Martin has a number of plant and plant-related photographs in his Flickr photo sets, so do visit them if you have the opportunity. Thank you, Martin!

“Probably originating from Mexico or Guatemala” is the native origin suggested by a reference for Caesalpinia pulcherrima in the International Legume Database & Information Service (ILDIS). However, much like Lantana camara, red bird of paradise or Barbados pride has been introduced to so many warm places around the Earth, its distribution should now be considered purely pantropical.

The Wikipedia entry on Caesalpinia pulcherrima links to this interesting article by Dr. S. Allen Counter (a professor of neurology and neurophysiology at Harvard Medical School) in the Boston Globe: Amazing Mystery. Dr. Counter details the medicinal properties of Caesalpinia pulcherrima and asks the question of how indigenous knowledge can (and so very often does) precede Western medicine's knowledge of the human health uses of a plant.

Photography resource link: Musings on Photography is a weblog by Paul Butzi of Carnation, Washington. Its tagline, “Musings on photography from an artist perspective and art from a photographer perspective”, gives you an idea of what you'll experience if you visit the site.

Yesterday's walkabout in the garden yielded the discovery of only a few scattered and tattered flowers, so I turned my attention elsewhere. The combination of rushes and reflections in this small pond in the Alpine Garden was photographed as a result.

Members of the rush family, Juncaceae, are found on every continent except Antarctica. However, because they tend to be associated with water, it is easy to explain their collective absence from the deserts of Africa, central Australia and Greenland. Not so easy to explain is the fact that they are found in most tropical areas except the Amazon rainforest and Madagascar. I imagine there is a biogeographical hypothesis for the lack of Juncaceae on Madagascar, but I personally can't come up with a plausible bit of speculation regarding the Amazon.

Despite Juncaceae's wide distribution, two related plant families have an even broader distribution, encompassing all areas of the world except for Antarctica and the frozen desert of Greenland: Poaceae and Cyperaceae (the grasses and the sedges).

To a casual observer, sedges, grasses and rushes all resemble each other (long, thin leaves & small flowers), so you might be asking yourself “How do I tell them apart?” A mnemonic taught to most botany students gives some hints: “sedges have edges, and rushes are round, but grasses have nodes from their tips to the ground”. For an explanation, visit University of California Museum of Paleontology's page on Glumiflorae.

Somewhere near a century ago, this groove was cut into the trunk of this Western red cedar so a springboard could be inserted, at a height of around 1.2m (4 ft.) from the surface of the ground. Another 1.2m or so higher, the horizontal cut was made to fell this centuries-old giant. Although I have no idea of the fate of the lumber from that tree, the stump and the notch remain. In the hundred years or so, they've first borne witness to the recolonization of native flora and, subsequently, the planting of the David C. Lam Asian Garden. For a sense of scale, this stump is about as large as the one from this photograph.

The Darius Kinsey collection of photographs from the University of Washington Libraries documents logging practices during this period. Its forest scenes gallery of images includes photographs of springboards in use.

Art resource link: Art and Perception is a group weblog about its namesake. Excellent questions being asked and active conversations in the ensuing comments make it a great place to learn (and participate, if you are so inclined!).

A thank you to Australia's Ken Beath, aka kjbeath@Flickr for today's photograph of an Australian native plant (original image via the Flickr BPotD Group Pool). Ken also has a web site, complete with photo galleries. The image is much appreciated, Ken!

As Ken notes, the common name for this plant is Christmas bells, due to the time of year it flowers in its native New South Wales. According to the Pacific Bulb Society's page on Blandfordia, the four species in the genus Blandfordia may also be collectively known as Christmas bells, so that is worth noting if you intend to source this plant for your garden and you prefer common names.

Like many Australian plants, the history of this species in both botany and horticulture contains the words “Britain” and “English”. Tony Cavanagh of The Society for Growing Australian Plants has written an excellent summary of the history of the genus Blandfordia, complete with English botanists, horticulturists and nobles. If you're more interested in the plant itself, the Australian National Botanic Gardens has produced this factsheet on Blandfordia nobilis.

Botany resource link: I linked to University of Connecticut's EEB Plant Growth Facilities yesterday, but I thought I'd point out this in particular today: Pollination Syndromes is a categorical listing of different modes of pollination (by wind, by bat, etc.) accompanied by links to factsheets about the plants in the EEB Plant Growth Facilities currently in flower. The result of aggregating this information is a very handy way of comparing pollination syndromes.

Updated January 19, 2007 at 1:07PM local time: I've changed this entry from Nepenthes alata to Nepenthes ×ventrata after the recently received comment and a review of these plants. The accompanying text remains somewhat pertinent, though still more relevant to Nepenthes alata. – Daniel

Another thank you to Monika (aka monika&manfred@Flickr) for submitting a photograph for use on BPotD (original image) – I'm very grateful!

Winged nepenthes, or winged tropical pitcher plant, is native to the Malay Archipelago. A question not addressed in last month's BPotD entry on Nepenthes sibuyanensis is how the pitchers grow and develop in this genus at the cellular and tissue level. Fortunately, a paper exists about these highly modified leaves: Owen, TP Jr. and KA Lennon. 1999. Structure and development of the pitchers from the carnivorous plant Nepenthes alata (Nepenthaceae) (PDF link). American Journal of Botany 86(10):1382-1390. It is intriguing to read how slight variations of what might be considered a typical leaf can be combined to produce this complex modified organ.

A few more links to visit: the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Plant Growth Facilities at the University of Connecticut has an entry on Nepenthes alata with information about its native habitat. Wikipedia also has an extensive article on Nepenthes, and notes that Nepenthes alata is one of the easier species to grow in cultivation (like the plant in today's photograph).

Photography resource link: “The Eye and The Camera”, an article by Alain Briot for The Luminous Landscape. The essay tackles the differences between what is seen by the photographer and what is captured by the camera from both artistic and technical perspectives.

Abstracted, this pair of leaves from a spiked ginger-lily reveals little about the nature of the plant on first glance. However, a closer look at the pattern of venation reveals this plant is monocotyledonous instead of dicotyledonous (having one seed-leaf as opposed to two). The parallel veins directed from the midrib (the two bold green lines in the two leaves of this photograph) outward to the leaf margin is described as peniparallel venation. For comparison's sake, the venation of grasses (another monocot) is simply termed parallel – the veins run parallel along the length of the blade (lamina) in either the presence or absence of a midrib. The presence of a type of parallel venation (including peniparallel) is a typical trait of monocots.

Hedychium spicatum is native to southeast Asia. The Flora of China has a comprehensive description of Hedychium spicatum, while its economic botany is detailed in the Plants for a Future database: Hedychium spicatum.

Environment resource link: I feel fortunate to have been able to photograph this image yesterday. Heavy rain and harsh winds have dominated the weather in British Columbia and the northwesten continental US the past few weeks. For some photographs of the extent of the damage, the US National Park Service has a few photo galleries online: Glacier National Park, Nov. 7, 2006, Glacier National Park, Nov. 8, 2006 and Mount Rainier National Park, 2006 Flood Images. On the last page, I found this image compilation in PDF to be the easiest way to view all of the images of damage in Mount Rainier NP.

A thank you to frequent BPotD contributor Eric in SF@Flickr for today's photograph (original image submitted via the BPotD Flickr Group Pool). I told myself that I needed to avoid photographs of California and its flora for at least a week or so, since I've been fairly California-centric lately – but one more won't hurt before I start that. Thanks, Eric!

California is the centre of diversity for the genus Arctostaphylos (the manzanitas or bearberries). Pajaro manzanita, unfortunately, is one of the endangered species. It is present in only two counties, Monterey and San Benito; a small population in Santa Cruz County was lost to residential development. It has been given 1B.1 Status by the California Native Plant Society, meaning it is “rare, threatened, or endangered in California and elsewhere” (1B) and seriously endangered in California (0.1). Despite that designation, it has no formal listing in either state or federal endangered species lists. This factsheet on Arctostaphylos pajaroensis from the Elkhorn Slough Coastal Training Program details the threats to the populations in Monterey County: again, residential development and associated fire suppression.

As always for Californian native plants, the Jepson Manual provides a detailed description of the taxon: Arctostaphylos pajaroensis.

Photography resource link: for inspiration, the photography of Patricia Brundage from Connecticut. Unfortunately, many of the images are on the small side.

It's been at least a month since I've shared a Lensbaby photograph, so I suppose I can sneak a couple in today.

Colletia hystrix is commonly known as crucifixion thorn or barbed wire bush. If you discount the cacti in UBC Botanical Garden, then this species competes with Erinacea anthyllis for the title of “most likely to puncture skin if handled carelessly”. Its photosynthetic thorns are viciously sharp, which, as you can see, makes it difficult to smell the small, fragrant flowers.

The species is native to Chile and Argentina. The cultivar 'Rosea' is so named because of the pink buds which gradually fade as the flower matures.

Colletia and other closely related genera in the Rhamnaceae (and the not-as-closely related Ceanothus) are actinorhizal, i.e., they have nitrogen-fixing root nodules formed in association with Actinobacteria. This phenomenon is summarized by Luis Gabriel Wall in The Actinorhizal Symbiosis - Plant Communication with Other Organisms - Chemicals are the Words from the Journal of Plant Growth Regulation in 2000 (19 (2): 167-182).

Horticulture / agriculture / history resource links: In a tangential response to this question about Eucalyptus in and around San Diego, a few interesting links were uncovered about eucalypts in California: San Diego's Eucalyptus Bubble by Leland G. Stanford in the Journal of San Diego History and The Eucalyptus of California: Seeds of Good or Seeds of Evil? by Robert L. Santos, Librarian / Archivist at California State University, Stanislaus. Thanks to Aussiebob on the UBC Forums for the second link.

Elisabeth Feldman, aka hurleygurley@Flickr submitted today's photograph via the BPotD Flickr Group Pool (original image). While I very much appreciate viewing photographs of plants without scientific names in the Flickr group pool, it generally makes it difficult for me to use them on BPotD (I need to ID them, which takes time I often don't have). On very few occasions, though, the requirement of a scientific name can be set aside when an exceptional body of work exists and I can post under the BPotD category Botanical Art. Elisabeth's photography and digital art easily meets the criterion of an exceptional body of work.

Of Elisabeth's nearly 1400 photographs on Flickr, many have a botanical theme. If you want to concentrate on her botanical work instead of discovering them by happy circumstance while browsing through all of her photographs, Elisabeth makes it very easy – she's organized her photographs into over a hundred photo sets. My personal favourite is this one: BW & Duotone Botanica, but there are many others with a botanical theme, including: Natural Scenes - Cream of the Stream, Autumn 2006, Nature Up Close - Cream of the Stream, Jes Flowers, Natural Details, everything but the flowers, fairyland, Fungi!, Liking Lichen, Macroscapes and blossfeldt inspired - a subset.

Instead of me trying to describe her art and failing, Elisabeth's approach to photography is better described by her in her Flickr bio or her Utata bio.

Many thank yous for contributing to BPotD, Elisabeth.

Photography resource link: While browsing through Elisabeth's work, I learned she was a member of Utata, “a collective of photographers, writers, and like-minded people who share a compelling interest in the arts”. Visit the site and overdose on creativity – my first impression was that it is one of those top-tier photography sites where one can spend a lot of time learning from the quality work of others. As one example, while reading through the articles, I came across Transcending Photography, an interview with Maureen Shaughnessy, who you will recognize (if you've a good memory) as a frequent BPotD contributor, MontanaRaven@Flickr.

It's a statutory holiday Monday in British Columbia, so I'm taking a break from writing today. If you've only discovered BPotD in the past four months or so, you can learn a bit about Rocky Mountain juniper in this June 2006 entry on Juniperus scopulorum. Yes, this is the same plant. This photograph was taken last weekend in quite different weather and light (and with a different lens).

A look at the genus Acorus is a glimpse at the past. It is the sole genus within the family Acoraceae, which in turn is the only family within the order Acorales. Recent work suggests that the Acorales is the sister group to all other monocots. What does this mean? I'll borrow a passage from the Flora of North America on Acoraceae: “Evidence based on DNA sequences fails to show any close relationships between Acorus and other genera, and instead supports Acorus as the oldest extant lineage of monocotyledons (M. R. Duvall et al. 1993)”. Other orders of monocots have evolved more recently (though this is relative – the scale is in the tens of millions of years).

From a gardening perspective, Japanese or grassy-leaved sweet flag is a striking groundcover. As its cultivar name implies, this particular selection is both dwarf and golden-coloured. For more, see grassy-leaved sweet flag at the Kemper Center for Home Gardening (ignore the part about it being a member of the arum family – that's out of date) or North Carolina State University's factsheet on Acorus gramineus.

Botany / horticulture resource link: There's a new(ish) blog carnival on the topic of trees: Festival of the Trees will reach festival #6 at the beginning of December. I'll link to it again when I submit for the next festival, but in the meantime, there is plenty of Sunday reading if you follow the links to the various weblogs.

Thank you to wermsrus-jacki@Flickr from Portland, Oregon, for sharing today's image (original image) via the BPotD Flickr Group Pool. Much appreciated!

Clematis 'Rooguchi' (sometimes misnamed 'Roguchi' or 'Rouguchi') is the result of a cross between Clematis integrifolia and Clematis reticulata (linked pages via Clematis on the Web). This deciduous lax climber is a relatively recent cultivar, having been raised in 1990 by Japanese clematis breeder, Kazuhige Ozawa. The British Clematis Society has featured it as a Clematis of the Month.

Conservation resource link: Wade Davis lectured at UBC on Wednesday, and I attended. He brought the audience's attention to the mining exploration occurring at the headwaters of the Nass, Skeena and Stikine Rivers in northern British Columbia, an area that has previously been proposed as a National Park. To get an idea of why, this National Geographic article by Davis contains a select quote: “When John Muir traveled the lower third of the Stikine in 1879, he called it a Yosemite a hundred miles (160 kilometers) long, and he counted some 300 glaciers along its tortuous course. It's a land where Canada could hide England, and the English would never find it”. Current news articles about the fight to preserve much of the area can be found on the Sacred Headwaters site: “BC natives seek to protect land, pristine rivers”, “Band finds it's not alone in fight for wilderness” and “Great-grandmother arrested for joining blockade to stop 'threat'”.

The Desert Garden of Huntington Botanical Gardens (in San Marino, California) contains thousands of taxa of dryland-adapted plants. In my opinion, it is the botanical highlight of Huntington BG.

This particular “mother of hundreds” cactus is one of Huntington's oldest living accessions (assuming accession numbers are given sequentially by chronology) – accession number 948. The highest accession number I've recorded from my visit was 93643. Considering the Desert Garden was started in 1907-1908, and assuming accessions were recorded from the beginning (not a safe assumption, I've learned), it's possible that this particular plant is nearly a century old.

Mammillaria compressa is native to northeastern (subspecies centralifera) and central Mexico (subspecies compressa). Details on both of these taxa can be found on the wonderful Mammillarias.net (here and here). Both pages show the diversity of form of these subspecies through photographs.

Lastly, local readers might be interested to attend the Freeman Patterson lecture next week in Vancouver, “A Call to Creativity”. A big thank you to Jennifer (aka colour@Flickr) for pointing it out to me, as I would have missed it.

Although there are no plants in this photograph, Death Valley National Park contains over one thousand species including twenty-three endemics. This represents over half of the plant species native to the Mojave Desert in an area less than a quarter of the full extent of the Mojave. I don't mean to minimize the size of Death Valley NP, though – it is, after all, twice the size of the State of Delaware.

The US National Park Service's site for Death Valley National Park has areas dedicated to the wildflowers and succulents of the park. If you intend to visit Death Valley to see the wildflowers, the park web site is very useful in planning your trip.

Photography / art resource link: For inspiration, the photo gallery of Peter Bussell: Edelweiss Studio. Peter sent me a short note informing me about his work and his site: “my passion is plant and insect macro photography – I shoot all my material in Wakefield, Quebec, so flowers and insects of the Gatineau Region with some artistic elements, too”. I've added Wakefield to the list of places I'd like to visit some day. Thanks, Peter!

Today's photograph is contributed by van+s@Flickr (original image | BPotD Flickr Group Pool). The plant in the image was cultivated indoors at the United States Botanic Garden. Thank you for sharing, van+s!

Aeschynanthus speciosus, or lipstick plant, was previously featured as a Plant of the Week (main page) – as always, when a BPotD entry overlaps with a Plant of the Week entry, I enthusiastically recommend visiting the PotW site for more information. Tidbits gleaned from the PotW page include the distribution of this species (southeast Asia) and its ecological strategy (it's an epiphyte).

A detailed look at the genus Aeschynanthus is available on this page via the The Genera of Gesneriaceae. A more concise treatment of the genus Aeschynanthus can be found on Wikipedia (see Aeschynanthus). I was particularly interested to read the derivation of the generic name.

Anne from Alberta (aka annkelliott@Flickr) submitted this mid-June photograph via the BPotD Flickr Group Pool (original image). The image was taken near Calgary, Alberta. Many thanks, Anne – it's a plant I've not seen for a long time.

When I first encountered this plant, I learned it by the scientific name Psoralea esculenta and the common name Indian breadroot. Well, the common name has remained the same, but its generally accepted scientific name has changed to Pediomelum esculentum. The change seems to be the result of this monograph: Grimes, JW. 1990. A revision of the New World Species of Psoraleeae (Leguminosae: Papilionoideae). Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 61: 1-114. (sorry, the monograph is not freely available online). Grimes' work is later reinforced by this phylogenetic analysis.

The shift from Psoralea to Pediomelum is an example of a recent trend of renaming North American genera and species (Pediomelum esculentum is native to the Prairies and US Midwest) to separate them from closely-related (but not closely enough!) European counterparts. Another example is the move of North American species of Aster into the genus Symphyotrichum (and other genera).

There is a story behind today's photographs. Rosa, aka contemplar@Flickr sent a photograph of this plant for identification to Julie Ardery, the writer behind the Human Flower Project weblog. Julie didn't know the plant, so she posted it to the Human Flower Project: Name That Bloom, where a few of us identified it for Rosa. However, I did not realize that the Rosa who had submitted the photograph was the same as contemplar@Flickr, who you may remember has shared a few photographs with BPotD in the past. Rosa kindly submitted a few photographs (original image 1 | original image 2 | Flickr BPotD Group Pool) to BPotD so I could share the story. Thank you!

Had any of us identifying the plant been a philatelist interested in Australian stamps, it certainly would have been identified lickety-split – Hakea laurina is featured on a 2006 Australian stamp (via the ANBG). The Australian National Botanic Gardens also has an article on growing Hakea laurina.

Denis Wilson, who blogs about the Nature of Robertson in New South Wales, Australia, wrote an entry on Hakea laurina that is worth investigating. Also, do look at Heather Simkin's illustration of Hakea laurina (click on the thumbnail to enlarge) – exquisite!

Lastly, a reminder for locals: you're invited to my presentation on “Plants, Gardens and Landscapes of the Southwest USA” at noon on Tuesday in the garden's reception centre (it's free).

Today's image is courtesy of annelies foto nl@Flickr (original image | Flickr BPotD Group Pool). If you can, do find an opportunity to settle down and spend some time with annelies' photographs of flowers and plants. Thank you, annelies, your photograph is much appreciated.

Cauliflower mushroom is, according to Michael Kuo, “unmistakable” – nothing else looks quite like it. This species (depending on the taxonomist) is native to Europe and North America. It is often labelled as a “choice edible” by mycophiles, but its flavour is not its only exceptional quality. A single clump of Sparassis crispa can exceed 20kg!

More photographs and text about this intriguing fungus can be seen on California Fungi (MykoWeb), Fungi of Poland and wood-decaying fungi of the northeast United States.

A nod of thanks to “yweride”, a contributor on the UBC Botanical Garden Forums for submitting this image. A larger image is available in this thread. Thank you, yweride.

Oregon State University's Landscape Plants has an entry on 'Chief Joseph' lodgepole pine that includes a very brief history of the discovery of this selection, as well as a summer vs. winter comparison. I note with fond memories that it was discovered in the Wallowa Mountains, a place I'm itching to return to after having visited it all-too-briefly seven years ago.

I'm going to speculate that the yellow winter colour is due to both an increased concentration of the pigment xanthophyll and a corresponding decline in the chlorophyll, but if I'm wrong, someone please correct me. I wasn't able to find any references to support my speculation.

Thank you to pmarquesbird@Flickr of Portugal for today's photograph. If you get a chance, browse his Flickr set of photographs – Portugal's nature, landscapes and cityscapes are all well-illustrated. Much appreciated!

The common name for this insect-mimic is sawfly orchid. Like other members of the genus Ophrys (collectively known as the “bee orchids”), its relies on fooling male insects for its pollination. The combination of pattern and pheromones from the plant mimics the look and smell of the female insect, thereby enticing the male insect to visit. While the male insect pseudocopulates, it accidentally collects pollen on its body. A subsequent visit to a different plant completes the act of cross-pollination.

Wikipedia has a great entry on Ophrys if you'd like to learn more. For photographs and a human use of sawfly orchid, visit the Herbarium at the University of Reading's page on Ophrys tenthredinifera.

Apologies for the late entry today. Access to the server was down last night and my Internet access from home failed me early this morning.

Since my attention is mostly set on completing my presentation for tonight (see the latter half of this entry for details if you'd like to attend), I thought I'd simply show a small scenic photograph today.

This image was taken in late October of 2003, eight months or so after I started taking an interest in photography. I've yet to witness a similar intensely-coloured sunset from the garden, but I do wait in anticipation to see how three additional years of experience and learning may help in attempting to photograph how such a scene makes me think and feel.

Thank you to “ginger749” on the UBC Botanical Garden Forums for submitting this photograph from Gold Coast, Australia. You can see the original, larger image in this thread. Many thanks – nice to see some late spring flowers from the southern hemisphere!

The story of the species Metrosideros excelsa or Pōhutukawa is doubly sad. Once fairly widespread in coastal areas of the North Island of New Zealand, the population of plants is in decline. This is due in part to a voracious alien, the Australian brushtail possum. Exhaustive details about this and other threats to the native New Zealand Metrosideros species are available from Project Crimson.

Despite its decline in New Zealand, the plant is flourishing in South Africa – so much so that it is now considered an invasive alien; Our Native Plant Invaders from the Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture has more on this threat to the fynbos.

The University of Melbourne's Horticulture program had a “Plant of the Month” feature (it seems to be defunct) – it once featured Metrosideros excelsa.