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Buttercups are as we all know usually yellow. But they also come in other colors. Here's an Asian Butterfly in pretty scarlet. Still bright though wet with the drizzle which seems not to be letting up here this morning.
Joseph Franz Jacquin (1761-1839) in his fine catalogue (and illustrations), 1811-1816, of rare or little known plants gives a very good colored drawing of our plant. There's some discussion about who first scientifically described it. Some say it was intrepid explorer William Bartram (1739-1823) in his famous book on the natural history of the southeastern states of the US and also their native inhabitants (1773-1778). But if you turn to those pages the description doesn't quite fit the plant: its flowers are said to be rose. So naturalist Thomas Walter (1740-1789) would seem to be its author. Jacquin mentions someone else again, famous André Michaux (1746-1802); but he, too, was a Continental; and besides, in those days there was no internet to compare notes. In any case, the shrub hails from the Savannah River.
And it's quite at home as well in the Amsterdam Hortus Botanicus.
The Netherlands and thus also our Hortus have been caught up by really hot weather much like that in the Tropics. Not that I mind; I rather enjoy it... And Tropical Butterflies, escaped from their glass hothouse, are frivolous on flowers outside in the Garden. Here's a Julia Heliconian, Dryas iulia, nectaring on a Cutleaf Coneflower, Rudbeckia laciniata. These Heliconians - flamboyant as they are - vary slightly in their markings. You have to look very carefully, though. Those differences distinguish various subspecies. Which one this is, I don't know and - given the hot weather - I've no patience to try to look it up. So Dryas iulia will have to suffice...
As I walked in that idyllic garden, the Amsterdam Hortus, news beeped up on my phone: a hard lockdown against Covid-19 in The Netherlands until at least January 17. The Hortus locked and out of bounds...
Anyway...
Here's a Winter Heath, Erica herbacea, in full flower. I expect to see it again soon after the 17th next month.
The Alpinia family - a kind of Ginger also known as the spice Laos - is large and I've posted about it before. I'm not sure how to distinguish the various kinds that often to a layman look very much alike. But Botanical Gardens do a good job of labeling so I suppose this one is correct, too.
The flowers are quite small and a delight to for example Orange Longwings. This particular stalked plant is in the Butterfly House at the Hortus; today, though, no hosting of Butterflies...
Monkshood is one of the deadliest plants - at least to human beings - you'll find in your garden. Indeed, ancient Romans used it as a plant for executions.
All parts of the plant are highly toxic even the pollen. And it has been claimed that people have been poisioned by Monkshood honey that contains the plant's pollen (as reported by H.S. Puri in 1974 citing Motoyoshi Satake 1969). And around 1900 in Germany the honey itself was thought to be toxic to humans.
But fear not this little scene. Our insect is not a Bee collecting nectar for our honey. It's a Marmalade Hoverfly, Episyrphus balteatus, eating pollen. The proteins will be extracted from it by nectar and enzymes in Hoverfly's stomach. That will provide energy for reproduction and also for further foraging which is sure to pollinate plants for multiplication and the further Purple Glory of a garden.
Many years ago I hiked the same route on the Peloponesse of Greece as Constantine Goulimis (1886-1963) a decade or so earlier, although I went from west to east, from Areopolis to Gytheio. Quite probably I saw this beautiful crocus near Vachos... but with too little knowledge I had no idea it was 'special'.
Our crocus was named for Dr Goulimis by William Bertram Turrill (1890-1961) in 1955. Here it is in full Autumn flower in the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam.
Even on a sullen day these orange clusters of flowers brighten the garden. This Chaenomeles japonica was described by Carl Peter Thunberg - yes, he of Japanese fame - in the 1780s as Pyrus japonicus. But later it was renamed to eliminate confusion with other apples and pears. It was first 'imported' to Europe at the very end of the eighteenth century and now graces many gardens all over the world for its brightness. I've not tasted this Quince's fruits 'raw' but the jam made from them is very good.
In his The Herball (1597) John Gerard (1545-1612) is one of the first to give an elaborate description of our Cyclamen. After a longish piece on the merits and uses of its various parts he becomes personally solicitous about the way he has planted his garden:
'It is not good for women with childe to touch or take this herbe, or to come neere unto it, or stride over the same where it groweth, for the naturall attractive vertue therein contained is such, that without controversie they that attempt it in manner abovesaid, shall be delivered before their time: which danger and inconvenience to avoide, I have (about the place where it groweth in my garden) fastened sticks in the ground, and some other stickes I have fastned also crosswaies over them, least any woman should by lamentable experiment finde my words to be true, by their stepping over the same'.
Already at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Thomas Johnson, 'Citizen and Apothecarye' of London, in his 1633 edition begged to differ with Gerard, writing that the latter had no proof for his assertion that Cyclamen is an abortifacient when women 'stride' over it: 'I iudge our Author too womanish in this, led more by vain opinion than by any reason or experience'.
Charles Plumier (1646-1703), indefatigable botanist and explorer of the West Indies, in 1703 named our Flower generically for another great and wide-ranging botanist, Jean Ruel (1474-1537), well-known translator of Dioscorides, Materia medica.
Ruellia rosea was described in the second half of the nineteenth century by a variety of botanists under several names. This is the one that stuck, although I'm not sure exactly of the exact meaning of the name by which it goes in the tropical glass house of our fine Hortus: 'Ruellia rosea Mart. & Nees'.
For this time of the year in Amsterdam it's very cold, and it feels like Spring is too slow in bringing Warm Sun. Even these flowers this morning were very blue! But they waved prettily in the brisk wind...
The umbels of Alexanders are composed of numerous pretty, small green flowers with nice white-tipped stamens. They draw lots of foraging insects, notably Hoverflies, and Ants like to collect their sweets.
Here's a Garden Ant, Lasius niger, eating its fill.
This is not the golden brightness most people associate with Tulipa clusiana, which is more a combination of white and pink or red. In 1923 our plant was found by a flower collecting expedition in the very north of India, the union state of Jammu and Kashmir. It was first called only Mountain Tulip and then regarded a hybrid or even a cultivar of Tulipa clusiana. Cell analysis made clear, however, that Chrysantha is a special, natural variety of Clusiana.
And a Golden Beauty at that! In his great description of Tulips of 1803 Pierre-Joseph Redouté writes of Clusiana: 'Cette plante mérite ... d'être cultivée dans les jardins d'ornement.' I would hazard the same is even more true of Chysantha!
Olymp had to maneuver a bit to give you an idea of our plant's name: Slipperwort or Calceolaria. If you look carefully you can see the slipper's opening on the right. It's a nice, very yellow flower and sparkles in the Autumn sunlight.
Calceolaria is not from these parts but it hails from South America. From 1777-1788 a scientific fact-finding mission - the Expedición Bótanica al Virreinato de Perú- was funded by enlightend king Charles III of Spain (1716-1788). It was headed by Hipólito Ruiz López (1754-1816) and José Antonio Pavón y Jiménez (1754-1840) assisted by their French colleague, Joseph Dombey (1742-1794). If you look at those dates: be astonished how young Ruiz and Pavón were when they embarked on a voyage to the other ends of the world from European Spain!
Many specimens of plants were collected. Among them this Slipperwort which was found in Panao, Huánuco in central Peru; in their description (1798) our botanists say 'in the woods of Panatahuas'.
It was still quite cold... This Hairy-footed Flower Bee (see Bernhard Jacobi commenting below), laden with pollen, brought to mind something I read recently about the body temperature of Bees. Scientists have discovered that the heavier their pollen load, the higher their body temperature rises. In warm weather that can lead to the heat exhaustion of our woolly friends. No fear of that yesterday in the Hortus where Hairy-footer was garnering nutrients from under the hood of Yellow Clary.
Compared to the glum summer's day in Amsterdam, the Greenhouse in our Hortus was bright and comforting.
Here's Achira, Canna indica. It hails from South America, and was attested by one of the conquistadores of Peru, Diego Palomino (ca.1506-?) in 1549. He'd seen it in the Cuquimayo Valley (Cusco) and describes it under the Quecha name Achira as one of four root crops of that area (the others are sweet potato, cassava, and racacha). Our plant was first scientifically described (1609) by the Jesuit father, Benabé Cobo (1582-1657). Soon botanists in Europe such as Bauhin, Parkinson, Clusius, and others were writing about it. Parkinson (1629) called it 'The Indian flowring Reede'. And given its colors, that's appropriate.
Lion's Tail, Leonurus cardiaca, Heartwort, is well-known down through the ages as a plant beneficial to the heart and it was said to 'heal the mind' (especially of child-bearing mothers; hence also the name Motherwort) and to thwart evil spirits.
Moreover, it does in fact appeal greatly to all kinds of Bees; Abraham Munting - seventeenth-century professor of Botany at the university of Groningen - in his Great Herbal remarks that it is useful to put on Beehives because it draws Bees together; they are highly partial to Heartwort's aroma. Even in the miserable rain this morning, Bees were foraging on our Plant.
These little flowers are about 8 mm in length (= 1/3 inch).
In the glum morning I was admiring Eucomis pole-evansii, the Great Pineapple Lily. The 'pole-evansii' is for Welshman Illtyd Buller Pole Evans (1879-1968), appointed to mycology and plant pathology at the Transvaal (South Africa) Department of Agriculture in 1918.
So there I was looking at those pallid fowers. A bit of sunlight and a few Bees were out collecting pollen.
As I watched I startled the Honeybee in the main photo. She lost her bearings and got caught up in a finely constructed spiderweb. In a blinking of my eyes she was already being tightly wrapped and readied for lunch by Spider. Amazingly quickly. About halfway on the right of her enwebbed body you can still make out some of that yellow pollen.
Daniel Carlsson Solander (1733-1782), a student of great Carolus Linnaeus, accompanied James Cook on the Endeavour's first voyage around the world (1768-1771). In the South Seas he saw this Rhopalostylis sapida, which Johann Georg Adam Forster (1754-1794) - who went on Cook's second voyage - called an Areca (1786). It's now in blossom in the Hortus Botanicus here in Amsterdam.
I examined it closely and found the male flowers sticky with nectar. It's exuded by the pistillodes - the infertile pistils that the male flowers bear. My fingers were deliciously sticky from having brushed those flowers as Olymp was doing his thing.
Curiously none of the scientific descriptions that I read mention that stickiness. In the inset you can see a few of those pistillodes with drops of nectar.
My mother of dear memory once told me that she was seasick for a week on the North Atlantic and that she - who had a great penchant for colors in her flower beds - saw various dark shades of lilac and purple most of the time in her delirium. She'd have been amused by the story of Elias Erici Tillandz for whom this wonderful excentric plant was named. Tillandz (1640-1693) from Finland, as a student traveled from Turku to Stockholm to further his studies. On the way there he is said to have been so dreadfully seasick that he never ventured aboard a ship again. To return home he walked the 1000 kms around the Bothnian Gulf.
Great Carolus Linnaeus, always in for a good story, decided to name a Bromeliad family for Tillandz because the roots of these plants are so shallow that they never need to experience deep water. Of course they live mostly in the jungle and collect water in a variety of other ways.
Olymp decided to be bright in the dimness of the Hortus glasshouse in the autumnal gales. So the photo is a bit more colorful than I'd have wanted. But Olymp doesn't easily take 'no' for an answer...
Since the beginning, the Clusius Garden has had a public as well as a scientific and educational function: the role of a truly modern museum. Originally intended as a herb garden for research and education of plants of importance to medical science, it was immediately a botanical garden, with a large collection of plant species from all over the world. The garden is a typical Renaissance garden: divided into four quadrants, which in turn are divided into rectangular spots.
Together with Johan Huydecoper (1625-1704), a famous mayor of Amsterdam, Jan Commelin (1629-1692) founded the Hortus Botanicus at its present location in 1682. Commelin, the botanist of the two, wrote a catalogue of its plants, the first volume of which was printed in 1697.
In it he describes our African Milkwort as a year-round plant. He says it came to the garden from the Cape of Good Hope through the good offices of Huydecoper. Just as a drawing was being made of it, the plant met with accident. Commelin writes that it could still be drawn but that it died before he could examine its seeds. So the plant in the photo is not descended from Commelin's plant...
In 1896-7 there was at the famous Kew Gardens some confusion. Hermann Wildpret (1834-1908) in a consignment of many other plants, had sent some seeds from the famous JardÃn Botánico of Puerto de la Cruz on Tenerife, Canary Islands, of which he was the curator. They were labeled as Echium candicans, a quite different plant. That became evident when they sprouted in 1897. This Echium was then named for Wildpret. The Hortus Botanicus here in Amsterdam is proud of two great spikes of this plant; indeed, towers of jewels when they're in flower as now.
Wildpret was something of a hiker and mountain climber as well and you might like to know that in November 1866 he took his contemporary, the famous evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) up the steep slopes of the Pico del Teide. They reached the summit as the first Europeans to have done so in that season. They'd been wise enough to wear spiked boots.
It's Autumn regardless the Latin name of our Ascending Lobelia now so pretty in the Hortus.
The continent of Africa is a large place so you can imagine that both great Carolus Linnaeus (1753) and Curtis's Botanical Magazine (1806) were at odds.. The first claimed Ethiopia as this Lobelia's heritage, the second the Cape of Good Hope. But it delighted me in our very own Hortus.
In other words I do not know the name of this flower I photographed at the Open Garden, "The Wright Place" in Kambah, Canberra, ACT. An overcast and very windy day so I was pleased to get this image without using a tripod. An amazing garden with a series of garden rooms avoiding straight lines where possible.
I now believe this flower is an Osteospermum.
Europe, Netherlands, Zuid Holland, Lieden, Rapenburg, Hortus Botanicus. Hothouse, Tropical plants
'De Hortus' is the oldest botanical garden of the Neherlands-- foudend in 1590 by Carolus Clusius. Website: here.
It's been a while since i posted Hortus pics, the last time was some 13 years ago: here, here and here.
German plant collector Johann Frantz Drège (1794-1881) (see my www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/34721393640/in/photoli...) found the forebears of this pretty Nemesia versicolor during the Summer of 1830 in three places in South Africa: notably in the west between Lange Vlei and Heerenlogement and in the east near Silver Fontein not far from the uMzinyathi River (Buffalo River) running down from the Drakensberg, part of South Africa's Great Escarpment relatively near Lesotho. In the scientific literature there's confusion about the exact coordinates of these places. Drège's extant herbarium exemplars (Missouri; both from Lange Vlei [see internet photos]) were identified by Adèle Lewis Grant (1881-1969) as Nemesia versicolor Benth. in 1930 but the coordinates ([28°34'22"S][023°49'34"E] are for a place west of Kimberley and neither for Lange Vlei nor for Silver Fontein.
Drège was an intrepid and exacting collector, and he noted down carefully where he found his plants. His notes were later edited by his friend Meyer in 1843 and our Nemesia was scientifically described in 1836 by George Bentham.
Drège returning to Germany in 1834 married and, remarkably, renounced his adventurous life. He became the director of a nursery business. These pretty flowers in the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam derive, I am pretty sure (the inset 'red' is, I think, not a 'naturally' occurring form), not from those South African climes but they're the cultivar products of a Dutch nursery. I'll have to ask my friends at the Hortus from which one.
About the English name common to our flower The Botanical Magazine of 1792 remarks sharply: '"Virginia Stock", a name highly improper, as it is found to be a native of the Mediterranean coast'. Regardless, it often after two centuries still goes by that moniker. The scientific name 'Malcolmia maritima' was devised by William Townsend Aiton (1766-1849) in 1812, to honor famous English nurseryman William Malcolm (fl.1750-1789). Earlier (e.g. by great Linnaeus) it had gone by the generic name 'Cheiranthus'.
This pretty little flower hails originally from the coasts of Greece and Albania but has become naturalised all over the world. Its colors move from white to yellow and a variety of pinks and purples and sometimes even red.
It's not very likely that this bright Trifolium medium, Zigzag Clover, will go to seed this late in the year. It's long tubular flowers can be accessed only by long-tongued insects such as some Bumblebees and various other Bees. And it's too chilly for those insects now. Zigzag grows and multiplies best from June to late August. But here today in the protective half-shade of the the trees in the Hortus it's brightly pink.
On a trellis of the wind-free wall of the Palm House of the Hortus in the early spring Sun this Blood Pear is about to burst into its pretty blossom. It hails from the mid-Apennines in Italy; the 'cocomerina' is for watermelon. Though the pear has greenish skin, its flesh is pink; hence its English name: 'Blood Pear'.
in 2019 Anthony Hitchcock (1960-2020) published a wonderfully exciting overview of the 're-establishment' of this Erica, discovered in the Cape, South Africa, in 1767 but extinct in the wild from 1908 (Science and Actions for Species Protection: Noah’s Arks for the 21st Century. Proceedings of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences’ Proceedings of the Workshop of 13-14 May 2019, Chapter 46, eds. Jurgen von Braun, Thomas Kauffels, Peter Raven, Johannes Vogel and Marchello Sánchez Sorondo, Libreria Editrice Vaticana). There's now a shrub of it in the entirely renovated Glass House of the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam.
The photo shows a Garden Bumblebee 'stealing' nectar from one of Heath's pretty tubular flowers. Its tongue isn't long enough to access that sweetness through the tube. So it gnaws a tiny hole at the base of the flower that allows it to suck up nectar. I've earlier posted a similar phenomenon but on Aquilegia: www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/47944011838/in/photoli.... Take a look at our Bee's proboscis.
seen at Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam;
verbreitet von Südafrika bis nach Ostafrika, Lebensraum: stille, langsam fließende Gewässer
One of the defining characteristics of this Sawfly is its very long legs - hence the Greek 'macrophya' - as compared to others of the genus. It's a mimic of Spider-eating wasps but itself subsists on tiny insects, nectar and pollen. Here it is as a vegetarian on Green Spurge.
The name 'Osmia' is derived from an ancient Greek word for smell or odor. These solitary Bees mark the opening of their nest with a scent, said to be of a lemony kind. Here 's one on a Rockfoil flower.
This pretty Palm with fanlike (=Thrinax/flabellate) fronds is not marked in the Three-Climate House of the Hortus. But on the fine website it's called a Coccothrinax sp. Though no expert in Palms, I'm not entirely convinced. I think it's more specifically rather a Thrinax radiata which has sometimes in a dimmer past been called a Thrinax aurantia; 'aurantia' for orange-colored.
Often photos of Cape Myrtle show the pretty, crepe flowers (e.g. my www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/32033583714/in/photoli...). But today's fine view of its Autumn Foliage in the Hortus Botanicus is worth a view! Enjoy.
In 1837 The Botanical Magazine writes that their pretty colored drawing of our Plant was made by William Henry Harvey (1811-1866). Harvey was an Irish botanist who worked in South Africa 1835-1837 and revisited there 1853-1858. He's the co-author of the first volumes of the important Flora Capensis (1859-1933). The drawing was made from a Tulbaghia flowering in 'the Ludwigsburg garden, at the Cape of Good Hope'. What that garden is called today and where it is, I don't know.
The same entry also says that the 'roots' derived from the Government Gardens (=Company Gardens, I think), where the plant had been presented from an unknown venue a few years previously to Lady Frances Cole (1784-1847). She was the wife of the rather unfortunate governor (1828-1833) of the Cape, Galbraith Lowry Cole (1772-1842). Presumably she'd received this Tulbaghia when he was still in office, so before 1833.
This photo was taken in the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam, a repository for plants from South Africa. The violet color is not as common in Tulbaghia as the usual yellow, and I didn't smell garlic... I've written elsewhere on great Linnaeus's derivation of the name
(www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/35164401114/in/photoli...).
From the beginning of the eighteenth century every ten years or so a mission of the Russian Orthodox Church set out from St Petersburg for China. Its goal was to minister to the small group of Russian Cossacks and their descendants who'd been 'deported' to Beijing after the fall of Albazin (1686) on the Amur River to Chinese Qing forces.
In 1830 it was decided to send a scientific crew along with the churchmen. One of these men was the Russian naturalist Alexander Andrejewitsch von Bunge (1803-1890). His rather disjointed journal makes for interesting reading. But his main purpose during his eight-month stay was to collect plants in Mongolia and northern China.
Near Beijing he found this Bright Blue, flowering in a shady spot - 'in umbrosis'. It was named Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, and we call it Hardy Plumbago or Leadwort. Neither name does justice to either the flower itself or to today's Bright Blue Autumn Sky!
In 1817 Constantine Samuel Raffinesque-Schmaltz published his flora of Florida. In it he described this White-Topped Pitcher Plant that he'd found near Pensacola. It's a much cherished plant now in botanical gardens though red-listed in Florida.
Even in Autumn there are still a few flies around. They're attracted to this Sarracenia, described by Raffinesque as 'honey-smelling'. Inevitably they slip on the plants smooth surfaces and plunge downwards into a fatal cup. There they come to their end in a pool containing Pitcher Plant's digestive fluids.
It's quite chilly now - about 8C - and I wonder whether digestion is slower than in warmer days. Anyway, the inset gives you a look into Pitcher's 'soup'. You will note some dead flies, some of them of the Bottle kind... (Lucilia sp.).