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The new bed for carnivorous plants in the Hortus is slowly - notwithstanding the chilly weather - coming into its own. The various Venus Flytraps are growing by the day. Here's one that's presumably closed on a too adventurous insect. The tiny fly on top of the jaws that snatch is treading carefully so it won't be caught up as well.
A week or so ago I posted a photo of a Marmalade Hoverfly on this, our Baculellum articulatum (www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/54951810203/in/datepos...). It's still in full flower and is now also freely emitting its foul odor. Something like a mixture of 'old' sweaty feet and rotting meat. Much as this is disgusting to me - and probably for you as well - it's highly attractive to prettily colored Common Bluebottle flies. I watched for a bit and it seemed to me Bluebottle was nectaring and not foraging for pollen.
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...
Today the temperature in Yakutsk, Sakha Republic, Russia, is -37C; in the Hortus Botanicus here it's 5C. So no wonder this plant from that part of the world, once generally called Siberia, is flowering. It must be pretty warm for it in our garden.
Bergenia crassifolia was first collected in 'Siberia' by that undaunted naturalist Johann Georg Gmelin (1709-1755). He was part of the Second Kamchatka Expedition 1733-43 co-ordinated by Vitus Bering from Yakutsk. Gmelin arrived at 'headquarters' from St Petersburg in September 1736 and started putting his already large collection of naturalia in order with relevant descriptions. Then disaster struck; in November his house in Yakutsk with his scientific materials burned down. Courageously Gmelin soldiered on recollecting and redescribing; this work is the foundation of his four-volume Flora Sibirica, finalised after his death in 1769. It describes, too, our plant.
If you want a good read in a warm room on a Winter's Evening, you could do worse than to choose another of his works, the marvellous autobiographical description of his travels in those remote parts... It's accessible on-line.
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.
These tiny flowers hail from the west of North America. They were first found in Kickitat County in British Columbia and described in 1900 by Wilhelm Nikolaus Suksdorf (1867-1935). The name 'Amsinckia' is for the botanical amateur and one-time mayor of Hamburg, Wilhelm Amsinck (1752-1831). The plant was once regarded an exotic which made its way to Europe in grain shipments. Today it's naturalised here.
Just before the rain, some Hoverflies were clubbing about for nutrients on elegantly beautiful but tiny Lavender Calamint
(www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/48498289496/in/photoli...). I noticed Syritta pipiens with its striking Club-shaped femurs... But Olymp took a fancy rather to Flat-footer, Platycheirus sp. (left inset) and that Baccha elongata. Baccha has a club-shaped body with a very narrow 'waist'. I don't think there's a common English name, but in Dutch it's called 'Vliegende Speld', Flying Pin, and you can easily see why.
Think about it! Tongues. Human tongues taste, help masticate, clean one's teeth. But sticky Frog Tongues like my own are hinged at the front; they do those same things, and more importantly: in a split second we flop them out to catch our daily prey. We'd die of hunger without one.
And then the Bumblebee tongue: what an interesting organ. Like a supple sword it's contained within a long sheath and draws out to 'lick' at the end of its protection. That tongue is hairy and has tiny pores; yes, it's used for licking but more for absorbing the nectar it finds, and its stickiness helps in gathering pollen. Without it, Bumblebees - and for that matter other bees as well - would go hungry and die. Moreover, Bumblebees use their tongues as sensory receptors for many other things, too.
You can imagine that such a sensillan instrument needs good maintenance. So regularly Bees take time out from foraging to clean their tongues so as to remain sensitive to their environment of pollinating and nectaring flowers.
Here's a Bombus hortorum, a Garden Bumblebee, doing just that with its front legs. You can see the brown-purple protective sheath and just the tip of the tongue itself. Yes, it's long too: in this Bumblebee about 2 cm.
Hortus botanicus Leiden.
Victoria or giant waterlily is a genus of aquatic herbs in the plant family Nymphaeaceae. Its leaves have a remarkable size: Victoria boliviana produces leaves up to 3.2 metres in width. The genus name was given in honour of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.
Taken with my lovely Leica R6.2
Lens 80-200 Vario-Elmar
Film Ilford HP5+
Self-developed in Ilford Microphen(stock), self-scanned with Nikon LS9000 + vuescan(linux) + darktable (linux)
Eduard August von Regel (1815-1892), director of the Imperial Botanical Garden at St Petersburg, Russia, and his colleague Friedrich August Körnicke (1828-1908), keeper of the Herbarium there, had a sharp eye on their collection of trelitzia augusta. When the plants began to flower in 1858, our formal German Botanists lost their usual scientific cool even in their scholarly description. Miightily surprised, they exclaim: 'Wer hätte nun aber geglaubt, das unter den als Str(elitzia) augusta in den Gärten verbreiteten Pflanzen, zwei ganz verschiedene Arten enthalten seien?' (Who would have thought that two different plants in the garden go under the same name Strelitzia augusta!). They wax eloquent on their find of an unknown Strelitzia and with almost embarrassing unction name it for the Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaievich (1831-1891), Czar Nicholas I's third son, 'grand protector' of the Gardening Society of St Petersburg.
Strelitzia nicolai must have come undetected in a shipment of plants from southern Africa. In 1889 Curtis's Botanical Magazine notes that it is still unknown from where in southern Africa it hails. Soon afterwards it was determined to grow in eastern regions of southern Africa all the way up through KwaZulu-Natal to Mozambique.
This photo is of a flower in the Tropical Greenhouse of the Hortus in Amsterdam (see inset).
Collegium Åšniadeckiego w Ogrodzie Botanicznym.
Krakow's Botanical Garden has a long tradition. It is now the oldest garden of this type in Poland, as it was set up in 1783, in the times of Enlightenment - time fostering the development of all science. The garden covers an area of 10 ha. It includes two, open to the public, blocks of greenhouses, three ponds with water and marsh plants, two alpinaria with mountain plants, and an arboretum, a collection of trees and shrubs. Altogether, there are about 6,000 various specimen.
What an amazing collection of plants from different points of the globe! You can see it in the Botanical Garden of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.
Taken with my lovely Leica R6.2
Lens 80-200 Vario-Elmar
Film Ilford HP5+
Self-developed in Ilford Microphen(stock), self-scanned with Nikon LS9000 + vuescan(linux) + darktable (linux)
The Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam has a small but varied collection of plants from South Africa. Most are in the Temperate Greenhouse; this pretty, Platinum-White Pelargonium though is in the Arid House. It is said to be the widest-ranging of the Pelargoniums.
Perhaps it was first collected in South Africa by indefatigable Paul Hermann (1646-1695) who traveled widely with the Dutch East Indies Trading Company; from 1679 onwards he was the professor of botany at the University of Leiden and the director of the local botanical garden. In his catalogue of plants he describes it as growing there in 1687: 'Geranium africanum, alchemillae hirsuto folio, floribus albidis', as great Carolus Linnaeus has it with reference to Hermann. By 1693 it's already being cultivated by Jacob Bobart (1641-1719) in England. Its present scientific name was given it by Charles Louis l'Héritier de Brutelle (1746-1800) in 1789.
Interestingly, the Xhosa language of the Eastern Cape calls our Platinum-white Pelargonium by the name 'umtetebu'. That same word is used also for a totally different, vibrant orange or vermillion fllowering plant, well-known Cyrthantus contractus. I wonder how that can be...
A gloomy and chilly late-spring morning in the Hortus Botanicus, but Nottingham Catchfly stood white against the dark soil. Two nights had brought forth in the pretty flower two consecutive rings of stamens, the male principles of flowers, with their pollen. The inset shows them still proud and straight with even a few pollen grains. But to prevent self-pollination our Flower's stamens shrivel on the third day, and it isn't until then that the female principle - those three styles with their purple stigmas appear; in the inset you can just see them peeping out, and they grow out amazingly fast.
The main photo shows the Masculine Shrivels and those proud Feminine Conduits to the flower's ovary. There its ovules will be fertilised by pollen from another flower.