Remember watching those nature movies when you were small? Where spring comes to someplace, and the flowers all open with time lapse photography? Well, this flower looks just like that, except that no time lapse photography is required. The sepals were moving so fast that they’re blurred once the first flower starts to open! ThisContinue reading “Fastest flowers in the West”
Author Archives: mike
Native plants, native bees. Alien plants, alien bees
You might think that bees think like this: see nectar, drink nectar. Find pollen, collect pollen. Simple, but incorrect. It’s more like European bees have European tastes and native bees have native tastes. Our familiar honeybees originated in Europe. They generally like European flowers: thyme, rosemary, lavender, mint, oregano, stone fruit and apple blossoms. YarrowContinue reading “Native plants, native bees. Alien plants, alien bees”
It’s bug eat bug out there!
As we were eating some strawberries, a ferocious creature crawled out of the bowl, it’s wickedly fanged head moving back and forth as its spiny body moved forward. Luckily, it’s a very small ferocious creature or I’d have been its lunch. The creature, an aphid lion, is the larval form of a lacewing, a fairylikeContinue reading “It’s bug eat bug out there!”
Feather Reed Grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora)
Tall, feathery pinkish flowers appeared a couple of weeks ago on our Feather Reed Grasses. Early morning or late afternoon, this grass is stunning. The flowers glow in diffuse light and sway even in the slightest breeze. Yes, grasses have flowers and are considered flowering plants. It’s just that since they’re wind pollinated they don’tContinue reading “Feather Reed Grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora)”
Art photography
The technique is simple: get a white diffuser, place it behind the flower on the sunward side so that it shades the flower. Set your camera to overexpose by at least one EV, make sure that no sunlight hits the lens and fire away. You may still need to adjust exposure in your photo editingContinue reading “Art photography”
A tale of two sages
Deschampsia. Muhlenbergia. Calamagrostis. Grasses have really long names!
Two of these grasses, the Deer Grass and the Tufted Hair Grass, are California natives. The other, Karl Foerster Grass, is a hybrid that does very well here. Tufted Hair Grass has been proposed as a lawn substitute, but that would mean mowing off the flower stalks, since at about three feet high they makeContinue reading “Deschampsia. Muhlenbergia. Calamagrostis. Grasses have really long names!”
Cloning for Dummies: cuttings
Unlike sheep, plants are easy to clone. You don’t even need a fancy laboratory with lots of bubbling liquids and mysterious equipment. Many plants root very easily from cuttings, allowing you to quickly clone one plant into many identical copies. It’s also a good way to grow herbs like sage and rosemary from stems youContinue reading “Cloning for Dummies: cuttings”
Interesting weather: hail!
We’re having a bit of interesting weather for May. Last Sunday dumped almost an inch of hail over everything whitening the street, making the landscape look like a winter scene but doing little damage to the plants. The worst affected were roses, with large petals and tomatoes, with large leaves. For those of you readingContinue reading “Interesting weather: hail!”
Sedges have edges…
Brief descriptions of some ornamental sedges used in California landscaping: C. praegracillis, C. pansa, C. flagellifera and C. divulsa.