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It's December! Time flies when the answer is always #1 for and #2 for no and there isn't a human left in the world to talk to. All that is very time consuming. I was On Hold in January and before you knew it, it was November and I'm still on hold.
Anyway, I'm still in the mood for color. Here's Aloe Ferox and, although not my favorite colors, this seems to have a little pre-Christmas cheer.
Aloe ferox, commonly known as bitter aloe, is a species of flowering plant in the family Asphodelaceae. This woody aloe is indigenous to southern Africa. It is one of several Aloe species used to make bitter aloes, a purgative medication, and also yields a non-bitter gel that can be used in cosmetics.
Aloe ferox is a tall, single-stemmed aloe, that can grow to 10 feet (3.0 m) in height. Its leaves are thick and fleshy, arranged in rosettes, and have reddish-brown spines on the margins with smaller spines on the upper and lower surfaces. The leaf surfaces of young plants are covered in spines; however, as they get taller and less vulnerable to grazing, the leaves begin to lose most of their spines except for those along the leaf margins. Plants in the western part of its natural range tend to keep more of their leaf surface spines. Pretty neat adaptation, huh?
Oh, oh. Have to go. I'm on hold with roadside service and they could be here any day. And they want ME to pinpoint where I am on Google maps when I don't have have my phone. I'm standing next to a '39 Pontiac in Grasslands...
It's been quite a while since I've seen an Acorn Woodpecker. Of course, I can no longer make the trek to the foothills where they're plentiful, but every once in a while I'll see a "scout" hammering away at the Heritage Oaks less than half-a-mile from our front door. Before the oak at Ginder Gap broke off because of the weight of the acorns and the age of the tree, I got this member of one of the families. He posed very nicely, I must say.
One of the easiest birds to identify because they're so distinctive. Knowing which sex is which is also easy: the male has the white patch above the beak all the way from the red crest to the small patch of black while the female's white patch is only half-way to the bill.