Thank you to Josh, aka joshbailey@Flickr for today's photograph (submitted via the Flickr group pool – do check out the original image at maximum resolution). Much appreciated!

The family Strelitziaceae (Strelitzia reginae shown in flower here) is native to South America, southern Africa and Madagascar. The stem-group for the Strelitziaceae is dated to 78 million years before present. South America, Africa and Madagascar, at 78mybp, were already separated by bodies of water (though not so distant from one another as present day), so either there remains older fossils to be found or the present-day distribution requires some dispersal events in its history (or a combination of the two!). If dispersal events were part of the history, they'd be relatively ancient: each of the three continents / subcontinents have their own genera (Strelitzia in Africa, Ravenala in Madagascar and Phenakospermum in South America).

In local news, Dr. Peter Raven of Missouri Botanical Garden is giving two public lectures today. The first is scheduled for 2pm at VanDusen Botanical Garden: How Many Plant Species Will Survive the 21st Century?. This will be followed by a 7:30 pm UBC Biodiversity series lecture, The Future of Plant Survival.

Art resource link: Living plant ephemeral sculptures, or Weedrobes, by Vancouver artist Nicole Dextras (also see this Flickr set) was brought to my attention via this thread on the forums.