An Abundance of Strange and New Plants

I feel like I've been around the world lately, even though in truth I've visited just a few new corners of the US.

Travelling through Idaho, I stumbled upon the stunning Thomas Canyon campground, and two of my favorite plants in flower: Balsamorhiza sagittata, and Viola purpurea.

Balsamorhiza sagittata (arrowleaf balsamroot) in the Ruby Mountains' Thomas Canyon campground

Viola purpurea (goosefoot violet)

At the Chicago Botanic Garden, I experienced in person for the first time two very charismatic plants: Taxodium distichum (bald cypress), and Theobroma cacao (cacao tree)!

Taxodium distichum. The knees, the knees!!

Theobroma cacao flowers. They didn't really smell like chocolate. And why the heck do they come straight out of the bark? Why oh why, and how?

In the Chicago Botanic Garden's arid greenhouse, I had the privilege of meeting a whole bunch of dry-adapted carbon-fixers.

Cactus flower

weird!

This Time of Year Again

Daffodils and Oemleria blooming - classic and sure signs of spring in Portland, OR

 

Fall Flowers

Caught a whiff of something just like spring, and found these flowers blooming in October.

it's happening!

There is a certain small evergreen bush I spend most of my time overlooking, but every year at the very earliest part of spring it snags me by the nose. Sweet and promising, unexpected perfume of its freshly opened, hidden flowers sits in clouds along city streets.

Other spring precursors:

 

Stellaria media happy and green, growing as a mini-forest on urban mulch unmolested.

An arrangement of green-headed matches, suggesting buds yet unburst.

Petal Sepal Confusion

How do plants keep petals and sepals separate? I found a trillium (Trillium ovatum) that doesn't.

This is a trillium, its three originally white petals fading pink in late spring. The petals rest on three pointed green sepals. Below the flower are three large photosynthetic organs, which I just learned are technically not leaves, but bracts!

And this is a trillium that looks to have merged its petals and sepals into one structure. Huh.