I'm very pleased with this photograph. Accurately capturing the blue-green colour on the upper surface of the leaves was the challenge, and I think I was successful.

Rhododendron campanulatum is a showstopper of a rhododendron, grown in cultivation primarily for its foliage. The blue-green colour on the upper surface of the new leaves is due in part to a thin layer of hairs. Brush off the hairs with your finger, and you discover a typical glossy green upper leaf surface underneath. The bottom of the leaves are a tactile treat - there, the velvety hairs grow so thick that rubbing your fingers along them is like touching a beaver felt hat. This isn't your everyday sort of sensation. As the leaves age, the hairs on the upper surface are lost, while the velvety hairs below turn colour from the white seen here to fawn then finally to cinnamon. The velvety hairs are collectively known as the indumentum.

Speaking of colours, check out Beautifully Blue. This is from a botany weblog which I discovered today: Art and the Bryophyte, run by Julie Ryder and Dr. Christine Cargill in association with the Australian National Botanic Gardens.

Update (Feb. 28, 2006 2:13 PM PST): Changed accession number on entry to reflect Brent's comments below.

Ideally, every plant in a botanical garden should be identified and named. Sometimes, for any of a number of reasons, the ideal is not reached.

This lupine is a good example. Wild collected in Patagonia in the early 1980s, it is labelled (and in our database) as Lupinus sp. aff. mutabilis. The original assessment of the plant was that it resembled Lupinus mutabilis, but the collector was not willing to affirm its identity one hundred percent.

For twenty-three years now, this plant has quite happily grown in the South American section of the Alpine Garden. In that time, none of the staff or researchers have been able to decipher its true identity due to a gap in our library. Generally we'd need either a comprehensive guide to either the plants of Chile and / or Argentina (a flora) in our library, or, alternatively, a scientific work that describes the Lupinus of the region or the world (a monograph). Without a step-by-step key to identify plants in the genus Lupinus of that region, any moniker we attach to the plant is scientifically known as a “guess” - and makes the plant even less valuable to researchers. In the case of using plants for research, it is better to be uncertain than to be wrong. So, for the time being, this plant remains a beautiful mystery.

Well, waking up at 5:30 AM yesterday morning was worth it, photographically-speaking. The early morning light was magnificent, and the garden is both quiet (except for all the birds) and filled with fragrance at 7 AM. It seems like it is the only way to take good botanical photographs during hot summer days and evenings, so I'll be switching my sleep patterns a bit.

The Himalayan blue poppies are just one of the many delights right now, although it seems to me there are fewer blooming this year than in previous years. The genus Meconopsis is found typically in the mountains of southeast Asia. There is a disjunct species in Wales and western England, Meconopsis cambrica. The people at the Meconopsis Group think it is doubtful that this disjunct species will remain a Meconopsis with a taxonomic re-examination. In the Asian Garden, you can find some plants flowering here and there at this time of year, although the largest patch of hybrid Meconopsis is yet to bloom near the fallen grand fir at the far end of the garden.

I promised that I would make a small request of local residents in today's photo of the day entry. Here it is: A Request for Help. In summary: the garden has been without adequate public transit service for three years. The plan for the next five years is to maybe have a shuttle bus that stops at the garden in the summer. It's frustrating and deflating, because (speaking unasked on behalf of the staff and volunteers), we have so much to share and so many people who want to share at the garden, and yet it is planned to have us continue to be difficult to access. We've ten thousand plants with stories to tell at the garden, and while the stories can be told through venues like the Photo of the Day, they still need to be experienced (P.S. The contest from a few days ago is still open).

Anyway, if you're a local (or a tourist who uses public transportion) and can spare a few minutes to add a few comments in support of restoring year-round public transportation to the garden after reading through that piece, I'd be much obliged.

Update (May 28, 2005 11:02 PM PST): Jordi from Spain wrote to me today to request a larger version of this file for desktop wallpaper. So here it is: Meconopsis betonicifolia, at two-thirds the size of the original photograph. The photo is not perfectly in focus, a fact which is revealed more strongly at larger image size - but that's just an excuse for me to try again. If you do want to use it as a desktop wallpaper, and have Photoshop, I recommend making it purposefully more blurry or alternately running a few passes of unsharp masking on it.

Also, I've substantially changed some of the text to add a few more links and more detail on some facts.

Photographed a few weekends ago in Merritt, BC.

Sorry, only the shortest of blurbs today - I wasn't able to post last night, and it is now very early AM, so I'm going to take advantage of being up so early and I'm out the door to go photograph!

I promised to make a request of local residents in today's post, but I won't be able to do it -- early morning light beckons -- I will make the request with tomorrow's post, though.

Today marks another first for the Botany Photo of the Day - first photograph from someone not affiliated with UBC. This photograph was forwarded to Judy Newton, the garden's education coordinator, from a personal friend to see if Judy or someone else at the garden could identify the plant. With a little help from Holmgren's “Illustrated Companion to Gleason & Cronquist's Manual of the Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada”, we were able to positively identify it as Conopholis americana (usually, I post emailed ID requests to our Plant Identification Discussion Forum so everyone can learn but since it is being shared on Photo of the Day, that isn't necessary).

Conopholis americana is commonly known as American cancer-root, and is distributed throughout eastern North America. This photograph is from a few days ago, and was taken in Frozen Head State Campground near Wartburg, Tennessee by Sam Roberts. American cancer-root is a member of the plant family Orobanchaceae, and like most members of that family, it lacks chlorophyll and is wholly parasitic, in this case stealing nutrients from the roots of woody forest plants. Some orobanchaceous plants are only partly parasitic with a partial reliance on chlorophyll, like Castilleja, featured previously on Photo of the Day (and originally posted incorrectly under its previous family name, Scrophulariaceae).

Apparently, the ancestral plant of this family was either non-parasitic or partially parasitic, as it seems the strategy of being completely parasitic evolved on more than one occasion within the family (for references, see the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group entry on Orobanchaceae).

As I mentioned earlier, this is the first photograph on the Botany Photo of the Day by someone not affiliated with UBC. I think it'd be a good idea to continue with this and perhaps make it a once-a-week feature. It would help mix up the images a little more in terms of style and content, as well as de-emphasize the Pacific Northwest of North America. I'm thinking of setting up a couple systems - a Flickr tag as well as an area on the garden's discussion forums where people can submit photos for review. There'd have to be a few common-sense conditions, like “it has to be your photograph”, “you have to be comfortable with the Creative Commons license used” and “there's no guarantee your photo will ever be used”, but I don't think they'd be a barrier for most people. Would anyone be interested in contributing?

The first duplicate entry on Botany Photo of the Day, I previously wrote about Calypso bulbosa on May 2, 2005. Still, I couldn't resist sharing this photograph - it is the first time I've ever seen the plants congregated so closely together. It's also interesting to me because it shows the plants in various stages, from fully-emerged flowers to flowers which are senescing.

Photograph taken north of Princeton, BC on May 16.

Yellow glacier lily from Manning Provincial Park last weekend. It started to snow while I was taking this photograph, so I was taking pictures quickly and without my usual tripod. I wasn't too keen on being caught at the top of the mountain with an icy downhill road (and no one else likely to venture up the side of the mountain that afternoon / evening), so I didn't spend as much time there as I would have liked.

Photographed last year near Merritt, BC (with a different camera than usually used for the Botany Photo of the Day). My visit to the same site last weekend was a week too early, as only a few had started to bloom. I was hoping to get a photo en masse, because it was exciting to see the blue ribbons on the dun hillsides, but I suppose it will have to wait another year.

Updated Oct. 10, 2006 at 2:39PM local time: I had this incorrectly identified as Castilleja miniata. It is actually Castilleja hispida var. hispida, as corrected by Mark in the comments. Thanks Mark!

This red paintbrush was photographed near Merritt, BC, last weekend. The red parts of the plant are not actually petals, but modified leaves (bracts).

Apologies for the brief commentary for today (and the next few days), as I'm out of town.

Spreading phlox forms mats of flowers at mid- to high elevations. This photograph, taken at roughly 1500m (@ 4900 feet) above sea level, was the lowest I observed the plant, while driving up the switchbacks on the side of the mountain capped by Blackwell Peak in E.C. Manning Provincial Park. Phlox diffusa can have flowers in colours ranging from pink to lavender to white, and the full diversity of colour was seen at this roadside site.

As an aside, I'd like to thank Steven (aka “plep”) for mentioning the Photo of the Day in his Monday, May 16th list of links. Steven compiles and reviews high-quality cultural, historical, literary and scientific web sites every weekday on his site; I like to think of his site as “The Journal of the Human Endeavour”. Well worth a visit.

Like many Chinese genera of plants, Amsonia also occurs in eastern North America. Atypically, however, the centre for diversity for Amsonia is in eastern North America rather than Asia (compare with Magnolia or Acer Section Macrantha (the snakebark maples)). Of the twenty or so species of Amsonia, 16 occur in eastern North America, while only 4 are distributed in Asia. Amsonia elliptica is the only member of the genus that occurs in China.

The Flora of China summary for Amsonia elliptica reports that a “decoction of all parts is used to cure chills and to induce sweat.”

Only a quick note today and tomorrow, as I'm out in the field taking some photos of native wildflowers and landscapes.

The wheel tree is now in full flower, which will last several weeks. Trochodendron has an interesting way of preventing self-fertilization - check out what was written for the interpretative sign.

Last year, I had the luck of being able to attend the awarding of an honourary degree from UBC to Bishop Desmond Tutu, and I keenly remember him asserting, “I am, because you are.” (which is deceptively simple). To me, the people who live this philosophy are the real heroes - the individuals whose sense for the “other” is so keenly developed that they cannot help but act or speak out; they are the embodiment of the human potential for good. I'm generous with who I accord as personal heroes - it includes broad swaths of people, from palliative caregivers to artists who provoke me to think differently to scientists who (after looking at all of the facts) cannot help but advocate for the Earth and its organisms.

I had the privilege yesterday of meeting one of those scientists: Dr. Daniel Pauly (a profile of Dr. Pauly from Science). I noticed Dr. Pauly at the entrance to the garden, so (boldly for me) walked up and introduced myself. Needless to say, I was delighted when Dr. Pauly, his wife and guests from Germany accepted my offer of a personal tour.

Now, I'm certainly not the best person at the garden to give a tour - I can think of at least a half dozen other staff members who'd be better, along with the Friends of the Garden who are typically responsible for tours. Still, the plants in the garden make it easy, and the Asian Garden is in fine shape: the 30m high Clematis montana scrambling up the native cedars is a cascade of blooms, the Meconopsis betonicifolia (Himalayan blue poppy) punctuates the green foliage here and there, and this Delavay mock orange stands out with its combination of colours. As that linked page suggests, the contrast of the calyx and petals is best seen before the flowers are fully open, which is why I'm pleased with this photograph; it has the flower buds at a number of stages. I also took a photograph of the flower fully open, for your interest.

Speaking of scientists I regard as heroes, it's an ideal time to explain the rest of the tagline for the Photo of the Day, which I alluded to in the entry on Salvia discolor. As I interpret her comments, Sandy is okay with being imitated, so I've readded the word “Daily” to the tagline (I'm not creative enough to think of anything more suitable), but what is the inspiration for “In science, beauty. In beauty, science.”?

The thread of that idea can be traced back to a talk given at a 1982 meeting of the Canadian Botanical Association by the late Dr. J. Stan Rowe (disclosure: biography written by my uncle) entitled “Beauty and the Botanist”. I wasn't at that meeting, but fortunately, it was later made into an essay and is available online (and hosted on my uncle's site). A quote: “The perception of beauty in the world is the proof of our belonging, the bridge to a wider sympathy extended beyond our own kind.” I am because you are.

Our current understanding of the plant family Ericaceae (which includes rhododendrons, blueberries and heaths) suggests that plants from this genus, Enkianthus, are the “oldest”, if you are speaking in evolutionary terms. In other words, if you investigated all of the genera of plants within this family, used shared characteristics to determine how closely plants were related, and then calculated the relationships between the genera based on those characteristics, you would discover that Enkianthus has been around the longest.

All other woody members of Ericaceae have characteristics which Enkianthus lacks; one of these is “tetradinous” pollen. This simply means that the fully-developed pollen grains are fused as a unit of four, and this is the case for nearly all woody Ericaceae except for Enkianthus. By contrast, Enkianthus has “monadinous” pollen - each mature pollen grain is a single unit. It could be argued that the evolution of tetradinous pollen in this family was one of the changes that allowed the woody plants of the family Ericaceae to diversify (it could also be argued otherwise, as there are other characteristics that are different between Enkianthus and the others - see Kron, K. A., Judd, W. S., Stevens, P. F., Crayn, D. M., Anderberg, A. A., Gadek, P. A., Quinn, C. J., Luteyn, J. L. Phylogenetic Classification of Ericaceae: Molecular and Morphological Evidence. The Botanical Review 2002 68: 335-423). Perhaps if the development of fused pollen grains in woody Ericaceae hadn't happened millions of years ago, you wouldn't be consuming blueberry jam or cranberry juice today.

Only a quick note today - I'm helping with the garden's annual plant collections inventory this week, so time is scarce.

Even if you aren't familiar with the genus Passiflora, you are probably aware of the fruit of the cultivated Passiflora edulis: passionfruit. The plant in the photograph is a different species, and is commonly known as fragrant granadilla. It is also cultivated, but only as a fresh fruit (not for juice) - Source: Fruits from America: An Ethnobotanical Inventory - Passiflora alata. The Fruits for America site also includes a photograph of the mature fruit.

This particular plant was photographed in a non-public glasshouse at the garden. We unfortunately do not have a public display glasshouse (yet), which would be ideal for showcasing plants such as these.

P.S. Note the photographer's prop in the upper left: flagging tape to suspend the viny stem from a pipe so as to be able to photograph inside the flower...