A Wandering Botanist

 It has been snowy and cold, icy and cold, windy and cold, and just cold the last week. So here are so plant photos to remind you of warmth. 

Ixora

Not all the bright flowers are equally attractive to a bee. Flower shapes are functional. They encourage pollination, but pollinators come in various shapes and sizes, so flowers fit some pollinators and not others. Which, if you take the insect's point-of-view, means some flowers are food sources and others are not. Bees like flowers they can land on and then climb into the flower, or walk across tiny flowers.

It was November and San Franisco's flowers were blooming!

The idea for today's blog was to share photos of plants in dramatic landscapes across the world. I have thousands of photos, but very few are a scenic shot featuring a small plant. Some of that is the problem of focus: either the foreground or the background is in focus. Some is that I never thought to take such pictures. I will try in the future. But, enjoy these: 

A field of mustards in bloom in central Tokyo (likely Brassica rapa planted by the park): 

San Diego is at the southern end of California: you can see Mexico easily. Given that location, it has mild southern winters. It is also a very dry climate since southern California is almost desert. What rain they get falls in the winter. All of which makes a "Mediterranean climate," very like the climate of southern Italy and Spain.

And a terrific place to escape to in winter.

Amaryllis, the big bulbs that are often given as holiday gifts because the flowers that emerge are so glorious, are in the genus Hippeastrum not the genus Amaryllis. The naked ladies that bloomed in the garden in August, those were Amaryllis.

Scientific name Hippaecastrum, common name amaryllis

pansies, December 16

Its mid-December at about 5000' on the east side of the Rocky Mountains. Often we have mild temperatures this late in the year but this year is unusually warm. We have had several snowstorms and some really cold days, but for most of the last two weeks its been below freezing overnight and as high as 60 F by day.

Plants are flowering.

Two years ago I was in London in the first half of December. Looking back at the photos, I'm struck by the contrast to Colorado at the same time of year.

London, December

northern Colorado, December

London is well north of Denver, any map will show you that. Yet, the ocean effects prevail: it was much warmer than the Colorado we'd left behind. Not only was it warmer, I saw many plants that we cannot grow in Colorado.

Japan! I loved the contrasts

Medieval fortresses:

historic Himeji Castle

to futuristic buildings

Mikimoto main store, Ginza, Tokyo

mesquite, probably  Prosopis glandulosa, honey mesquite

Deserts are stressful places for plants. Water is in short supply and often unpredictable in its arrival. Growing and flowering are difficult, since they require water. Yet plants like the mesquite, above, and the cardón cacti, below, were in flower in the dry Baja California desert in April.

desert scene, Baja California

Deserts plants cope with drought various ways.  Annual plants are opportunists. They spend most of the time as seeds, then grow, flower and go to seed within one to four weeks after a good rain, not to reappear until the next heavy rain. Other plants are perennial, visible members of the community. They have woody stems that increase in size or expand without wood from a big root system. Perennial plants must store water, soaking it up like a sponge when it rains, so that they can consume it slowly during long dry periods. Some perennials flower based on rainfall, but others flower the same time every year, using their stored water.

On the islands of the southern half of the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez), a surprizing number of perennial plants were flowering in mid-April.

Peonies! Wonderful big flowers and a rich scent. No wonder they've been favorites for millennia.

Peonies are plants of the genus Paeonia. It is the only genus in the peony family, the Paeoniaceae. There are 33 species, very like each other and not like much of anything else. They have an odd distribution: two species are native to the western US, a few species are found in southern Europe and across Asia but most peonies are native to eastern Asia.

The Chinese have been cultivating peonies for more than 3,000 years (written records from the early Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BCE)), creating hybrids, doubles and new colors. The Chinese particularly liked tree peonies (mǔdan), which are native only to China and available but not particularly common elsewhere. But they also loved herbaceous peonies (sháoyào).

Bougainvillea is one of the most common and most recognizeable tropical ornamental plants.

"Oh look, there's bougainvillea!"

And then we walk on.

But there's more to its story. For example, it was probably collected for western science by the first woman to sail around the world.

The Lunar/Chinese New Year started relatively late compared to the western calendar's year 2015. Consequently February '15 fell within the first month of the New Year and people still had their decorations up while I was there. Traditionally Lunar New Year celebrations included holidays at both the beginning and the end of the month. Since it was the Year of the Sheep (or ram, or goat or lamb or kid...the Chinese term, yáng, is ambiguous) there was ample opportunity for people to make creative displays.

Winter daphne, also called fragrant daphne, Daphne odora, is a flowering shrub from Asia. It is in the plant family, Thymelaeaceae, which, because most of its members are Old World, is not well known to Americans. You could call the Thymelaeaceae the daphne family or the spurge laurel family. Daphnes are planted as garden shrubs.

Chinese New Year--start of the year on the Asian lunar calendar--in which February 19, 2015 is the first day of the first month of 4713, reminds me of places other than the People's Republic of China where the holidays of the lunar calendar are celebrated.

One is Taiwan.

Taiwan is a subtropical island off the coast of Asia. It has belonged to both China and Japan in the last 300 years and has an indigenous population that is neither Chinese or Japanese, so Taiwan is a very interesting blend of cultures. Currently they are a self-governed democracy. They industrialized early and are prosperous and high-tech.

As an island, Taiwan is surrounded by beaches and beautiful ocean views. The temperatures are mild and the air warm and humid. But down the center is a range of high mountains, so you can retreat up into the mountains for a change in temperature.

The flowers of Kauai are lovely. Most of the easily-seen ones are non-native. For example