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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.
Bee was lucky! She found this Small Teasel in the Hortus. It's a plant quite rare 'in the wild', so we're lucky to have it protected here. It is, of course, closely related to the Common Teasel, Dipsacus fullonum, and certainly stands as high. But it has no water-collectors on the lower stem just above the root.
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.
Danewort or Dwarf Elder in The Netherlands is a highly endangered species. It's good to see it protected here in the Hortus. In Dutch it's called 'Kruidvlier', that is to say: Herbal Elder. In folk medicine it was long used as a remedy for liver and kidney complaints but it's highly poisonous. Various parts of the plant have been used to make red and black ink for writing.
It is said that one of its English names - Danewort - alludes to the idea that the plant is found especially on the battlefields of the Danes. Next time I visit one, I'll make a point of searching for it!
Our fine Hortus labels this pretty Tulip incorrectly as Tulipa orphanidea. It is in fact Tulipa dasystemon.
A few days ago I wrote about father Eduard August von Regel of the Czar's garden at St Petersburg, Russia, and his son Albert, the intrepid plant collector and explorer of the eastern regions of the Russian Empire. Tulipa kolpakovskiana was found and described by them. www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/51982167721/in/photoli....
This Tulipa dasystemon was found on Albert's same trip near Almaty in the hills of the Almatinka River. It, too, was described by the elder Von Regel in 1877.
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.
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.
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...
Yes, in our Postmodern Age plants can be trademarked, such as this hybrid of a South African Ice Plant (of the genus Delosperma). Its U.S. trademark name is P001S 'Fire Spinner', and it was designed by Plant Select of Denver, Colorado. Plant Select is "a nonprofit collaboration of Colorado State University, Denver Botanic Gardens and professional horticulturists". Cultivars such as this are now a colorful staple of many botanical gardens, including the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam.
In its search for protein Hoverfly is not deterred by this Ice Plant's hybrid status nor by the fact that it's trademarked.
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'.
When great Carolus Linnaeus described Doris Longwing in 1771 he refers to the painting engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet (1731-1790) in the magnificent Planches enluminées d'histoire naturelle edited by Edmé-Louis Daubenton (1730-1785) from 1765 onwards on the commission of that great French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788). The book has more than a thousand plates of which 973 are of birds; the others picture insects and corals. Regrettably that volume does not specify who (of some 70 or more painters!) actually saw Doris whether mounted in Europe or alive in South America. And Daubenton does not give a Latin classificatory name - Linnaeus a bit later called it Papilio doris - but merely refers to it colorfully as 'Le Parasol de Surinam'.
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.
It is said that Parrotia persica, Persian Ironwood, is critically endangered in the wild. But it is grown and thrives in many botanical gardens. Here it graces the bright blue Winter sky in the Hortus in Amsterdam. It's endemic to the southern reaches of the Caspian Sea where it was found in the late 1820s and soon thereafter described (www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/24053373129/in/photoli...).
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.
In 1855 well-known Andrew Murray (1812-1878), Scottish naturalist, published a description of the trees which his brother William and the latter's traveling companion A.F. Beardsley had seen on their Expedition in northern California in 1854. Of our Cypress - Chamaecyparis lawsoniana - he writes enthusiastically that it was 'the handsomest tree seen in the whole Expedition... the foliage is most delicate and graceful'. This rare tree has lived in the Hortus Botanicus for over a century and you can go to look at it to ascertain its beauty.
Juniper Shield Bugs - Cyphostethus tristriatus - have adapted to this Cypress as can be seen by this this engaged couple.
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!
Someone has written that this snowdrop is a bit of a scraggly affair compared to the common, single kind. Nonetheless, I rather like it. Apparently it was already being grown in England in the Duchess of Beaufort's garden around 1700. Whether that was its first bedding I don't know but soon it could be found all over western Europe. And today it's a spring garden's favorite.
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.
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...
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 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.
This pretty, delicate Cyclamen was first described in 1852 by Pierre Edmond Boissier (1810-1885) and George François Reuter (1805-1872). Though Reuter did travel several times with Boissier on voyages of botanical exploration in Spain, he primarily curated the latter's herbarium from the Mediterranean and the Near and Middle East.
This Cyclamen grows in northern Algeria and Tunisia from the coast southwards into the mountains of the Petite Kabylia and the Khroumirie. Note the rather jagged foliage compared to the roundness of the more common Cyclamen coum (see inset).
This morning the beautifully blue Chicory flowers in the Hortus Botanicus were full of small Resin Bees, Heriades truncorum (I think). The word 'resin' refers to their use of resin for the cell walls of their nests. According to Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1897-1873) in his great Nomenclator 'Heriades' is derived from the ancient Greek for wool. Why 'wool' would be descriptive of our Bee, I don't know.
This pretty creature is particularly devoted to yellow aster-like flowers. And you can tell she's been on a visit there. Heriades doesn't gather pollen in corbiculae on her tibias; instead pollen clings to hairs on her abdomen. Here you can clearly see her bright yellow collection.
Chicory has white pollen and the Resin Bees I saw were not collecting it. Rather they were diving deep down into the heart of the flower, presumably for nectar. An after work drink?...
Looking at a pretty cluster of Venus Flytraps in the fine bog for insectivorous plant of the Hortus, I noticed that a Wasp had been captured not very much earlier. In fact, the trap was still slowly closing on the already dead insect. A Flesh Fly alighted to see what it could see, and have a lick or two of terminal waspy body fluids. After a minute or so, it flew off to land right in the middle of another trap. It overstayed its welcome; generally those traps close within about twenty seconds of two or three of its trigger hairs having been touched. The drama unfolded before my eyes; relatively slowly the trap closed and Fly could no longer break loose... If you examine the inset you can see its red left eye looking through the 'bars'. As I left it was still struggling against digestion. An hour or so later all was still.
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.
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.
This marvelous split flower - look at the stamens and pistil - is endemic to the shores of Chile more or less in the shadow of majestic Aconcagua Mountain. It was first collected near the mouth of a river running down to the Pacific Ocean. Rodolfo Amando Philippi (1808-1904) was a versatile naturalist of German heritage. Though he specialised in moluscs and diptera his interests were wide-ranging and included botany.
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 1954 Gentes Herbarum writes of this marvelous then recent find: "Mr. R[obert]) G[ardner] Wilson [1911-1989] recognized that it represented a species hitherto unknown in cultivation and further checking indicates that it has not been described". Wilson and Harold Emery Moore (1917-1980) give a fine first description of this Pure Plant. It had been found a bit earlier for Wilson by one Mario Oguri, a Mango farmer near Acapulco, Mexico, 'who collected it in the wild'. It was first grown 'in captivity' by Fantastic Gardens, South Miami, Florida, USA.
Wilson and Moore still use the name 'Episcia dianthiflora'; the reference of the specific name is to the frilliness of some Dianthus flowers. In 1978 Hans Joachim Wiehler (1930-2003), German Gesneriad authority, determined that our Alsobia should be distinguished from the Episcia group, and henceforth the name Alsobia dianthiflora is the preferred one. The Hortus Botanicus here in Amsterdam still uses the earlier naming.
We all know that Tulips originate not from Holland but from the far-reaching Ottoman Empire. Much has been written about that provenance, and it's particularly relevant to the history of this Horned Tulip. It was described in Europe already in 1753 by great Carolus Linnaeus, who named it for polymath and naturalist Conrad Gesner (1516-1565). He writes that it comes from Cappadocia and was brought to Europe in 1559. Possibly, I might add, through the efforts of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (1522-1592), 'Austrian' diplomat to the Ottomans.
A quarter of a century before Linnaeus's description - during the bizarrely luxurious reign of Sultan Ahmed III (1673-1736) between 1703 and 1730 - Ottoman Tulip Craze frilled to a frenzy. That's testified to by a court painter Mehmet, who gives exquisite pictures of some 50 Tulips in his Osmanlı lalesi or Lale mecmuasi of 1725. Many of his flowers boast frills and filaments and quaintness not often seen in Tulips. One of these is this Tulipa acuminata.
I don't know when it was first cultivated in European gardens. But in 1876 Henry Harpur-Crewe (1828-1883), an English theological naturalist, waxes eloquent: "T. acuminata cornuta, with its strange narrow parti-coloured petals, is so quaint and curious that no one who has once grown it likes to be without it".
Here it's a staple of the Amsterdam Botanical Garden.
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.
Long known in the Persian and Arabic medicinal traditions as a 'soothing' plant e.g. for skin conditions, Wallflower was also used in Europe (see my earlier www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/24483486357/in/photoli...).
It's a winter-hard plant but now in early Spring coming into full blossom. Though it was a chilly morning at about 7C, the Sun was bright and warm. It drew out this Honeybee. Perhaps her collection will help provide for honey, also a great soother for skin ailments.
As you enter the Tropical Glass House of the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam, you will see a staircase on the right and in the cramped space next to it and the main entrance there's a marvellous little terrarium. It holds small tropical plants, orchids and the like, and some Beautiful Poison Dart Frogs, Epipedobates antonyi. I've always wanted to take a closer look, but the glass doors are wisely locked. But today I was in luck because I met the very knowledgable caretaker, Walter den Hollander, who was replanting and generally reworking it. So I got to photograph this beautiful tiny Orchid, only a few centimetres big. Pretty as it is, I'm a bit sceptical as to the label "Pleurothallis prolifera". I've posted Pleurothallis before (www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/16166600306/in/photoli...). In any case, I doubt the 'prolifera'. Anyone out there to enlighten me?
The Handsome Little Frog is Epipedobates anthonyi, Anthony's Poison Dart Frog. It lives just under the pretty Orchid, and the caretaker has buried a small glass container in which he rears fruitflies for Anthony's diet. The name of our Froglet is still in a bit of a flux. Until recently - a decade or so ago - it was called Epipedobates tricolor, but now it's been subsumed under 'anthonyi'. Not long ago, I posted a photo of its cousin in the Artis Zoo: www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/16842747509/in/photoli...
The designation 'anthonyi' is for the American mammalogist Harold Elmer Anthony (1990-1970). There's a lot to tell about this wide-ranging and remarkable, but especially gullible man. Maybe some other time!
PS The Hortus authorities might do well to expand that little terrarium...
I watched Honeybee alighting on Winged Everlasting. Flying to and fro between the pretty, papery winged flowers she'd soon gathered lots of orange-yellow pollen. Though our Ammobium loves the sands of south-eastern Australia, it's thriving in the loam of a flower bed in the Hortus. It was first collected in 1804 by the famous Scottish botanist and naturalist traveler Robert Brown (1773-1858), who'd sailed to Australia on HMS Investigator.