Hortus botanicus Leiden
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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.
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.
It was a bright day and after a bit of a wander outside in the Hortus I went into the Butterfly House. There I saw this colorful Tropical Milkweed. The shrub had flowers but it was also developing seed. I didn't see any Butterflies on it; they were congregating on Light-Blue Snakeweed and Lantana. Pretty flower, but don't break its stem; it will exude a poisonous, milky sap of which you'd better stay clear. It won't affect your skin, but might be transferred to your eyes to cause irritation there.
Hurrah! Some of the Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted. The Botanical Garden has opened again. Guess who one of the first was to go there this morning!
Here's a view of the Botanical Bridge...
If I'm right, Tradescants can be host plants of Brush-Footed Butterflies, but I've not seen any on the Tradescantia zebrina, Wandering Jew, of the Butterfly House in the Amsterdam Hortus. I'll continue looking in 2016...
Here's a pair of our Lilac Flowers bright and pretty on a drab and gloomy January day. They're part of the border plants in the Butterfly House.
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.
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'.
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.
Almost every day I amble to the Hortus along the Oudeschans and then take a left to the St Anthoniesluis with its quaint leaning pub (www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/49281387851/in/photoli...).
Many people have planted all manner of plants in the lifted tiles next to the walls of their homes. And now is Hollyhock season. Here's a wonderful threesome of which one is being visited by a Bee out for a sip of nectar.
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.
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!
It's often called 'alba' or white, is our Fuchsia magellanica, var. molinae Espinosa. In fact though, its 'petticoats' are of a very pretty pale pink.
This Fuchsia hails from the large island of Chiloé about 1000 kms south of Santiago de Chile. Marcial Ramón Espinosa Bustos (1874-1959) in 1929 named it to honor Juan Ignacio Molina (1740-1829), formidable polymath born in Chile. He entered the Jesuit order and on its supression in that country fled to Italy where he among other positions was professor of Greek in Bologna. He continued his work in natural history and was one of the precursors of the theory of the gradual evolution of species for which Charles Darwin is so famous. In fact, Darwin often refers to Molina in his works.
Espinosa writes on the centenary of Molina's death when he made his scientific description of our Fuchsia: 'Es para mà muy satisfactorio dedicir esta variedad, como un modesto homenaje, al eminente naturalista e historiador chileno, el abate don Juan Ignacio Molina'.
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 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?...
"Painter's Sorrow" is in fact a translation of one of the Dutch names for this very pretty little flower: Schildersverdriet. Apparently painters thought it very hard to picture properly. I can sympathise: it's really hard to get a good focus on this flower. My DOF can get no where near an acceptable photo much as I have tried. Perhaps later some time...
I'd been watching this small Mining Bee for half an hour or so collecting and packing that bright orange pollen. Then she lit on a stem behind a flower head. Sat there for awhile, maybe contemplating how to get to the stamens. Without trying she then flew off to wherever her nest is. And I went home for my own protein!
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.
The Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam has a pretty, small garden and tiny pond with insect eating plants. Though small, there's lots to see if you have the patience.
Here's a Common Darter Dragonfly, a voracious insect-eater, and it's alighted on the hood of a Pitcher Plant, a dangerous insect trap itself. I'm not sure which Sarracenia this is; it's labeled as 'leucophylla', and it may be a red variety. But it could just as well be a hybrid. Pitcher Plants hybridise easily... Not that the insects to be trapped care, I would think...
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'.
Ah! Yes! Perhaps I should have stayed a bit longer in the Hortus and had myself a hot chocolate against the chill of walking in the garden. But having to cook a meal for a guest tonight it was wiser to return home...
And neither did I get even a whiff of chocolate from this Chocolate Vine now in full blossom. It gets its English vernacular name from the purported aroma but perhaps there's too much chill today. Our plant was first described for the West under the name Rajania quinata by Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828) whom I've often mentioned in these pages. He put together a marvelous Flora Japonica (1784) in which he discusses the plants he found in Japan during his stay on the island of Dejima (in the harbor of Nagasaki) in the service of the Dutch East Indies Trading Company (VOC).
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.
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 last Fall.
Please take a look large on black.
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In 1872 a shipment of Dahlia juarezii from Mexico to The Netherlands revitalised interest in and love for Dahlias. The rest, as we know is history. In the photo two so-called Dark Dahlias: 'Black Jack' and 'Dark Princess. Their backdrop here is the trunk of a majestic Catalpa bignonioides. That tree (see inset) was planted here just before or after 1871. So Tree and Flower, are so to say, of an age...
The Mexican collector of this fine flower, Juan José MartÃnez Lejarza (Lexarza) (1785-1824), is primarily known for his great work on orchids. His contributions to botany were published posthumously in 1824. Lejarza was also a poet in Ovidian fashion; at least, Ovid was his own hero. Love and poetry are for him closely connected in his PoesÃas of 1827: 'Los que buscaren / finos amores, / en mi cestillo/ escojan flores.'
An earlier name for our vine was 'Mina lobata'. 'Mina' is for Francisco Javier Mina Larrea (1789-executed in 1817), a hero of the Mexican War for Independence from Spain. Ironically, the flower bears resemblance to the colors of the Spanish flag, and indeed often goes by that name.
Even when still a lad, I had a taste for Gooseberries and unlike some I didn't peel off their hairy skin to eat them. I rather like its tartness, in fact. If you look closely at the photo, you'll be able to see that the inner works of the flower are hairy as well. That flower is c. 12-14 mm in length.
This is the Coastal Black Gooseberry, Ribes divaricatum Douglas, from the 'vicinities of Indian villages' near the northwest coasts of America. It was first described by Scottish botanist David Douglas (1799-1834), who died so tragically on Hawai'i's Mauna Kea (www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/5557704063/in/photolis...). In the service of the Horticultural Society of London, he published this find of his in its transactions of 1830. Three quarters of a century later in 1907, Douglas's name was attached to the Latin by Eduard von Glinka Janczewski (1846-1918), botanist at Kraków, Poland, and an expert on Ribes.
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.
What happened between 1665 and 1682 with the plants of the original botanical garden of Amsterdam - a medicinal herb garden especially - I don't know. Fact is that the first prefect of that garden was Johannes Snippendaal (1616-1670). On his appointment he lost no time in making a catalogue of his plants which was published in 1646. In his listing he includes an Apocynum americanum which is today Linnaeus's Asclepias incarnata, a Rose Milkwood which grows in North America. Snippendaal was relieved of his duties in 1656 and the garden was dismantled in 1665; a new one was founded in today's location in the Plantage (1682).
Whether the Milkwood that I photographed this morning in that Garden derives somehow from Snippendaal's original collection... who's to say? The signage suggests as much, but I don't know on what grounds.
The other day was pleasantly sunny and as I ambled in the early-Spring Hortus Botanicus I came upon this Foxy-Red Tawny Mining Bee just basking in the Sun. Basking done, she'd no doubt go after the honey and nectar of the tiny aromatic flowers (see the inset) of her very own Sweet Box, Sarcococca hookeriana. Other Bees and Bumblebees seemed to be more attracted to Corydalis, so Sarcococca's delights were Fulva's very own to enjoy!
I looked for her burrow in the sandy ground nearbij but couldn't find anything. Next time I'll look more carefully.