The droplets of water on the foliage of large Mediterranean spurge hint at an ecological adaptation to hot, dry environments. During episodes of intense heat and dry air, the amount of evapotranspiration (the combination of evaporation and plant transpiration) can be so high that plants are unable to draw enough water from the soil (or internally) to retain biochemical balance and turgor, so they begin to wilt and burn. If this environmental stress continues long enough, the plant will shrivel and die.

Plants growing in hot, dry environments, have evolved a number of strategies to reduce the likelihood of “death by thirst”. This Euphorbia illustrates one example. Its leaves are covered by a thick epicuticular wax that prevents the loss of water from the leaf surface via evaporation; the wax forms an impenetrable barrier that water cannot pass through and be lost. The waxy layer works from both directions, though; the hydrophobic lipids of the wax repel the water molecules and prevent adhesion, while water's cohesive properties cause the beading.

Photography resource link: for study and inspiration, the flora and fauna photography of Sean and Jennifer McCormick of Alberta, Canada.

This mullein species has no English common name (mullein is the common name for the genus), which is not surprising considering its rarity in horticulture. In fact, a Google search for the name suggests that the alpine garden at UBC is one of the few places in the world you can see it in cultivation. To see it in the wild, you would need to travel to the Balkan Mountains.

If you were to visit the garden at UBC though, you'd notice that it is labelled as “Verbascum sp. (seedling of Verbascum eriophorum)”. It is a prime example of the difficulty in maintaining the genetic integrity of the plants in garden collections. From a research perspective, the most valuable plants in collections are often those of documented wild origin. These plants are known to share the genetic makeup of their wild counterparts, and can therefore be assumed in research undertakings to represent the true taxon. Plants of cultivated origin, or n generations removed from the wild populations, may have hybridized at some point – a particular risk in botanical gardens where a number of species from the same genus or closely related genera may exist in close proximity. With the possible introduction of foreign genes, it is impossible to be absolutely certain that the plant continues to be representative of the wild type, making it less valuable in research that relies on genetics.

Woody plants that do not reproduce for decades are the easiest plants to retain as known and documented wild origin, followed by woody plants with shorter generation times. Some perennials are difficult to keep genetically intact, while plants that are biennial or annual are virtually impossible (they would require seed to be collected from wild populations to be sown every one to two years). This is the case with this Verbascum, a biennial. The original seeds were wild-collected, and the first generation of the plant could be said with certainty to be of known and documented wild origin. As this is now the second generation, the possibility of hybridization has occurred, making the plant less valuable from a research perspective. Outward appearance and comparison of the second generation plants to the first generation (photographs – yes, it is over 2.5m tall) make me comfortable enough to write that it seems to be a similar enough genetic entity for the purpose of BPotD, but I would not bet a Ph.D. on it.

Botany resource link: The name Acacia retained for Australian species via the Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research in Australia. Long-time readers of BPotD will know I often write about name changes – here's an instance where a decision was made to keep a name, instead of a strict interpretation of the rules.

Holly osmanthus, false holly and holly tea olive are just a few of the common names attached to this fragrant shrubby member of the olive family. As I mentioned in the BPotD entry on Osmanthus suavis, the genus has a reputation for sweet fragrance; indeed, the word Osmanthus is derived from the Greek osme, meaning fragrance, and anthos, meaning flowers.

Osmanthus, however, is not the only fragrant genus in the family. Other members of the Oleaceae known for their scent include Syringa (lilacs), Chionanthus (fringetrees), Jasminum (jasmines) and Ligustrum (privets).

Photography resource link: For inspiration, the incomparable photography of Mike Moats.

Updated February 6, 2006 at 11:58pm: Found the label, and my tentative identification was correct.

I couldn't find a label on this camellia in the winter garden, but based on the location, the plants in the location, and a bit of sleuthing I'm fairly confident it is Camellia sasanqua 'Setsugekka'.

As a name, setsugekka is composed of three parts: snow (setsu), moon (getsu), and flowers (ka). “Setsugekka no toki mottomo kimi wo omou”, from an ancient poem, translates into When I see the snow, moon, or flower, I always think of you. (source). Yasunari Kawabata, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, discussed the phrase setsugekka; Professor Isamu Kurita goes into more details in an article entitled: “Japanese Art and the Japanese View of Nature”.

Botany resource link: Economic Uses of Algae, a small site produced by the Smithsonian Institution. The secondary products pages are worth a read.

Darrell (aka “dweeb” on Flickr) of the University of California, Davis, supplied this photograph of a deep-red abutilon via the Botany Photo of the Day Flickr Group Pool (original Flickr post). Thanks, Darrell – much appreciated!

A search of Google images reveals a diversity of floral morphology and colour within Abutilon that reflects its popularity in horticulture, particularly indoors.

Abutilon is a “traditional” member of the mallow family, Malvaceae, along with other plants such as cotton, okra and hollyhocks. Recent studies, however, support a notion of a much larger Malvaceae that includes the previously separated families Tiliaceae (the lindens), Sterculiaceae (the cocoa family) and Bombacaceae (the silk-cotton tree family, which includes baobabs). For an excellent resource on the changes, check out Malvaceae Info.

Photography / conservation resource link: Images for Conservation Fund – “Conservation of wildlife through sustainable development using the power of photography while integrating art, education and natural history.” via Nature Photographer Online Magazine's Nature Photography Supports Conservation.

After spending most of the past twenty-four hours wrestling with the garden's web server (with more to go since it's still not working properly), I know I'd appreciate a flower picture today for a bit of stress relief. In case the problems caused you to miss yesterday's photograph, here's the link: Solanum laciniatum.

Today's photograph features an as-yet unidentified lily from UBC's David C. Lam Asian Garden, photographed in July of this year. If you were to look at the label for this plant, you would observe that it's been designated Lilium sp. SICH.2255. “SICH.2255” is the plant's wild-collected number, and signifies that this plant was collected during the Sichuan Expedition to western China. When the plant is finally identified, it will retain the wild collected number, since the number is the only identifier attached to the propagated plants distributed post-expedition and the associated herbarium specimens. It can then be used to synchronize the identification with the distributed material.

Speaking of expeditions, Peter Wharton, curator of the Asian garden, is the garden's resident “plant-hunter”. He is soon to travel to Burma Vietnam to scout the region for what hopefully will become a long-term project on plant conservation in the area. I'm hoping that when he returns, he'll share some of his photographs with all of us on BPotD.

In BPotD news, the main page of the AOL web site on October 28 mentioned BPotD in their LiveWeb Blog section. Not sure how I feel about the site being listed under “more online distractions”, but it's still a welcome plug.

Lastly, Circus of the Spineless Number 2 is live. I didn't contribute any BPotD entries this time, but I'm still compelled to recognize the effort behind putting together an assemblage of writings about organisms and biodiversity. I particularly like this item from it: the creosote bush katydid.

Botany resource link: From the University of Pennsylvania, the Ethiopian Famine Food Field Guide delves into the wild plants consumed in Ethiopia. Be sure to click on Field Guide, then use the Category links across the top to dive into the information on the one hundred or so species of plants detailed (with photographs).

Apologies that today's entry is so late – I was updating the garden's web server last night, and ran into some difficulties that eventually spiralled into the site being entirely unavailable for twelve hours. Anyway, it's obviously up and running again, and everything is mostly working fine, though there are still a few troubles, so a short entry today.

The common name for this tomato relative is “kangaroo apple”, which hints at its native distribution: Australia and New Zealand. This plant is grown as an annual in the alpine garden, though it often survives a mild winter and persists as a perennial. The “Plants for a Future” database has a good account of the plant: Solanum laciniatum.

Nature / photography resource link: The Photography of Josef and Lubomir Hlasek contains hundreds, if not thousands, of nature images. Discovered via Scott's Botanical Links.

Kind thanks to Ken McCown for this image of a nasturtium shared via the Botany Photo of the Day Flickr Group Pool (Flickr posting). This photograph was taken in the Huntington Botanical Gardens Herb Garden in California. As Ken mentions in his comments on Flickr, best seen at original size (warning, it's big!).

Unfortunately, I need to attach “tentative” alongside the name as it may be a cultivar that I'm not familiar with – there are nineteen cultivars listed in the RHS Plant Finder for Tropaeolum majus, after all. For a gardening perspective, read this article on nasturtium by Dr. William Welch of Texas A&M University.

The family Tropaeolaceae is monotypic, which, if you'll recall from an earlier entry, means that it contains only the one genus, Tropaeolum. It is distributed natively in the New World, from Mexico south to the southern tip of South America.

Botany resource link: Why the Banana Needs Protection via Jeremy Cherfas on the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute Public Awareness weblog. You may have seen media reports a few months ago about the impending extinction of bananas. As is most often the case, things are a little more nuanced than that.

I'm rushed for time today, so I can't write as much as I'd like. Fortunately, I can direct you to some writings describing Mahonia from the garden's interpretative sign and this thread on the garden's forums (with other photographs, including some that are just a touch more true-to-life).

This was an overexposed photograph which I decided to save by performing the calculations command in Photoshop. I selected both blue channels, inverted each, then used the “linear burn” calculation.

Photography resource link: Shooting Wildflowers via the excellent Human Flower Project weblog.

There is much to write about black cottonwood, including: how it's a “hot plant in biology” because its genome has been sequenced; its ethnobotanical uses; whether it should instead be correctly known as Populus balsamifera subsp. trichocarpa; and who its closest relatives are (see Hamzeh, M and Dayanandan, S. 2004. Phylogeny of Populus (Salicaceae) based on nucleotide sequences of chloroplast TRNT-TRNF region and nuclear rDNA. Am. J. Bot. 91:1398-1408. – institution or subscription access required to read).

Instead, though, I'm going to write a bit about stream ecology, since that is what I had in mind when I took this photograph. I look at this image and I “see” grizzlies and orcas. Why? Organic input into streams from the surrounding watershed (such as these leaves) supply nutrients and energy to either detritus-eating invertebrates or aquatic fungi and bacteria (which are in turn ingested by invertebrates). Small predatory fish and large predatory invertebrates eat the detritivores, and are in turn eaten by salmon and other fish. From salmon, it's only one more step to grizzly bears and orca whales. I'm simplifying a little, because there are other foundations in stream food webs, (e.g., photosynthetic algae which then feed invertebrate herbivores which then feed...). Still, one study has estimated that imported detritus supplies over 99% of the energy input in some streams where the headwaters are heavily shaded (see: Fisher, SG and GE Likens. 1977. Energy flow in Bear Brook, New Hampshire: An integrative approach to stream ecosystem metabolism. Ecol. Monogr. 43:421-439.).

In addition to supplying energy and nutrients, plants play other roles in stream ecology. As examples, they are important in regulating stream temperature (overhanging branches provide shade and accompanying temperature gradients), mitigating heavy rainfall by moderating the inflow of water (i.e., ensuring that inflow from rain occurs over a longer period of time instead of heavy bursts that can cause mud slides or flooding), and, of course, providing habitat for forest denizens that rely on the watercourse for food and drink.

Photography resource link: Counting Triangles, an article by Michael Reichmann of The Luminous Landscape. I picked this article today because I only noticed after processing this photograph that the dry area of the rock in the upper left repeats the shape of the leaves in the spiral pattern (as does the rock itself).

Updated Oct. 30, 2005 at 10:30pm: I contacted the winery, and these are not 'Cabernet Sauvignon', but rather 'Cabernet Franc'. I'm usually pretty good at taking notes while I photograph, but not this time. Weblog entry changed to talk about 'Cabernet Franc'.

I visited the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia on the weekend to wine-taste and snap a few photographs of the vineyards. Typical of my inopportune timing, I went several weeks after the Fall Okanagan Wine Festival so wine inventory was spotty at a few places, but there was still much to taste and photograph. These 'Cabernet Franc' grapes were inside a giant plastic bin, recently harvested and soon-to-be processed.

In the late 1990s, it was determined by Dr. Carole Meredith of University of California, Davis, that 'Cabernet Franc' was one of the parents of 'Cabernet Sauvignon' (the other was 'Sauvignon Blanc') – this was popularly covered in the media, including this article from the Discovery Channel: “DNA analysis reveals mysterious past of cabernet sauvignon”. You can also read more of the history and qualities of 'Cabernet Franc' via Wikipedia.

If you have questions or would like to read some discussions about grapes, check out our Grapes and Grape Vines discussion forum.

Botany / image resource link: The Magic of Australian Native Plants photo gallery from the Association of Societies for Growing Australian Plants contains hundreds of Australian plant photographs (though a bit on the small side). One of my favourites is the photograph of the growth habit of Eucalyptus camaldulensis at Greenough, Western Australia on this page.

The common name for Gladiolus flanaganii, suicide lily, refers to the death-defying stunts photographers and observers need to perform to see this plant in the wild. Growing on cliff faces in the Drakensburg Mountains of South Africa, finding a plant is an adventure not for the timid. Fortunately, this treasure is becoming easier to find in cultivation.

South Africa is the centre of diversity for the genus Gladiolus, with over half of the roughly two hundred and sixty known species growing natively only in that country (i.e., endemic to South Africa). Astoundingly, the interbreeding of only eight of those species have produced the over thirty thousand cultivars of gladiolus known to currently or previously exist (Gladiolus flanaganii is not one of those eight species).

The flowers of Gladiolus flanaganii last little more than a day, then quickly decay. As can be seen from this photograph, the progression from unfurling to senescence occurs first in the bottom-most flowers.

Photography resource link: Digital Cameras – A Beginner's Guide by Bob Atkins via photo.net. This should be required reading before you purchase a digital camera, including such tips as why you shouldn't be impressed by high “digital zoom” magnifications.

The (dare I say it) edible, tasteless fruit of Gaultheria mucronata provide a mass of lilac-coloured blueberry-sized globes lasting throughout the winter in the Pacific Northwest of North America. Various texts claim that fruit of all members of the genus Gaultheria can be toxic, but it is known that the indigenous peoples of Chile relied upon Gaultheria mucronata as a food source. I’ve eaten it without ill effect, though not for the taste. Rather, I find the sensation of popping the thick-skinned fruit a bit of a novelty.

Often known as pernettya, and less commonly as prickly heath, for many years this plant was placed in the genus Pernettya. This lasted until it was recognized that all members of the genus Pernettya were genetically indistinguishable from Gaultheria. As I mentioned in a previous entry, modern taxonomy suggests that nomenclature should reflect evolutionary relationships, so the names of all Pernettya species were changed in accordance with the evidence, and transferred to Gaultheria.

Botany resource link: Identification Of Major Fruit Types, via Wayne Armstrong's botany site. Pumpkins are pepoes.

The specific epithet for redbud hazel, cercidifolius, implies that the “leaves are of Cercis”; the resemblance is such that a quick glance at the shrub can lead to misidentification during certain times of the year. However, when the chlorophyll in the leaves of Disanthus cercidifolius begins to break down, a panoply of colours are revealed dissimilar to the autumn colours of Cercis.

The genus Disanthus is monotypic, meaning it contains only one species (compare with a monotypic family – it would only contain one genus, like the Nepenthaceae). Similarly, it is recognized that Disanthus has no close relatives within the witch-hazel family, relatively speaking. For more on its phylogenetic relationships, see: Li et al. 1999. Phylogenetic relationships of the Hamamelidaceae inferred from sequences of internal transcribed spacers (ITS) of nuclear ribosomal DNA. Am. J. Bot. 86:1027-1037.

Photography resource link: The USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service Photo Gallery contains a suite of categorized photographs which are made available for use free of charge.

Another milestone today – this is entry number two hundred.

Decaisnea insignis is commonly known as “dead man's fingers”, a name inspired by its fleshy blue fruit, which ripen near Halloween and dangle menacingly from its branches. The follicles (pod-like fruit) contain black watermelon-like seeds surrounded by an edible, clear pulp. I would describe the taste as not unpleasant, but bland. The texture is more interesting – akin to jelly.

The akebia family, or Lardizabalaceae, contains eight genera. Decaisnea is an oddity as the only shrubby genus among a clan of woody climbers. Like most other members of the family, Decaisnea is native to southeast Asia, and in the case of Decaisnea insignis, western China. Two members of the family are an interesting botanical exception: Lardizabala and Boquila are native to Chile, forming what can only be called an odd biogeographical distribution for the family, as Chile and Asia were never in historic continental proximity.

The emerging foliage was previously featured on BPotD: Decaisnea insignis.

Botany resource link: UBC's Biology 321 – Bryophytes course site. Many images of mosses and liverworts, along with some introductory information about moss and liverwort morphology.