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Well you certainly do not see these beauties in my garden.
I saw these flying Hollander, ( what a great name ) butterflies in the little butterfly house at the rather splendid Hortus Botanicus which is a surprisingly rich and varied garden in the centre of Amsterdam.
I have mixed feelings about taking photographs of animals in captivity though I guess it feels less improper to imprison a butterfly than it does a Lion. Not a logical position I know…….
THANKS FOR YOUR VISIT AND FOR TAKING THE TIME TO WRITE A COMMENT IT’S MUCH APPRECIATED AND SO MUCH MORE INTRESTING THAN JUST GIVING A FAVE
Myself quite chilled, I came upon our Common Carder Bumblebee clinging to - perhaps pleonastically - Beautiful Calaminth - καλαμίνθα - on its footstool - κλινοπόδιον (but in the photo you can hardly see the hairy sepals from which the really very tiny flower arises).
Bombus was utterly wet and cold. Though she tried to move whirring her wings, nothing came of it. She just hadn't the energy to whir fast enough. For that nectar is needed or the Sun to provide enough warmth for her thorax to get a temperature of above ca. 30 C. So I took her in my cupped hand and breathed into them; slowly she revived and when a bit of Sun came out I put her back on Lesser Calaminth. She didn't stay long but slowly and a bit stiffly, I thought, bumbled away right into another rain shower. Coward for rainy wetness that I am, I gave up and fled into the Tropical Glasshouse for my own warmth.
Our Hortus has a pleasant stand of these towering Ginger Lilies, endemic to Nepal, which survive our own winters (for a picture of the flowers, see my earlier www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/28819250404/in/photoli...). In today's low hibernal Sun yellow-orange seed pods were cracking open to reveal red-orange seeds.
On the edge, indeed. It was 10C on this pretty Spring morning when Olymp snapped our Honeybee. Below that temperature Bees can no longer fly, but the Sun was out and so was she and up to her task for her hive. Squill provided beautifully pale pollen - see it sticky in Bee's corbicula.
Always a joy to see, those wonderful Cock's Comb Coral Trees in full blossom. I've been delighted by them in East and West, North and South, and also here in Amsterdam's Hortus Botanicus (see also my www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/31203752676/in/photoli...).
Honeybees love foraging around on the flowers for nectar as well as pollen. Here's one delving to the heart of the flower for its nectar, by-passing the pollen on the stamens.
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...
In the drizzly rain I walked in the grounds of a very wet Hortus. Omy!'s eye caught a flower of Bistorta officinalis - today often still called by its synonym Persicaria bistorta. It was described by Antoine Delarbre (1724-1807) of Clermont-Ferrand in France. A clergyman he was also a naturalist, a geologist, and a botanist, helping to establish the botanical garden of Clermont. He's the author of Flore de la ci-devant Auvergne (1800). In the second volume of the second edition (1836) he describes our Bistorta.
The pretty pink rain-dropped flower is being visited by, I think, a Meadow Boxer Hoverfly.
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.
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.
Our Hairy Pelargonium was first scientifically described (1800) as a Pelargonium by Carl Ludwig von Willdenow (1765-1812), famous among other things for his revision of Carolus Linnaeus's great Species Plantarum. Henceforth it goes in full by 'Pelargonium hispidum Willd.', and that's how signs in botanical gardens - also here in Amsterdam - usually label it.
But Willdenow wasn't the first to describe it. If you search out his references you'll be taken to Spaniard Antonio José Cavanilles (1745-1804), one of Europe's great taxonomists. Cavanilles gives a full description (1787) in his discussion of what we today know as Pelargoniums but he back then as Geraniums (the distinction between the two monikers came into use between 1774 and 1789 through the efforts of Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle (1746-1800)).
Botany is an international sport, of course. I've already mentioned a German, a Swede and a Spaniard. Let's continue.
In his description Cavanilles writes that he has received his information from French botanist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1748-1836) who culled it from plants given him by his countryman Pierre Sonnerat (1748-1814). Sonnerat had collected plants at the Cape of Good Hope in January 1773 with Carl Peter Thunberg, a frequent denizen of these pages, a Swedish student of great Carolus Linnaeus, who had not yet separated Pelargoniums from Geraniums.
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.
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 Śniadeckiego 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.
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)
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.
You might imagine that a Frog like myself is delighted when a botanist also takes interest in Our Family. Richard Baron (1847-1907), a missionary to Madagascar from 1872 onwards, was a botanist, too, and a tireless geologist and herpetologist. He's the author of the first handbooks for geology and botany of the island in Malagasy. He loved Frogs, and one of our beautiful Malagasy relatives - Variegated Golden Frog, Mantella baroni - was named for him by a great, stay-at-home-in-Belgium naturalist, George Albert Boulenger (1858-1937) in 1888. How can I so green and black not be jealous of Baroni's golden-black markings?! I'd love to see that Family in person. But Madagascar...
Baron will not have encountered Baroni - who loves the dense, humid forests - where he found Aloe deltoideodonta. The Malagasy name Vahombato refers to the dry, granite areas where that plant grows. I needn't tell you much here about that history because Jean-Philippe Castillon in 2014 published a fine, updated article-length study of these Aloes: 'Nouvelle remarques sur l'identité de l'Aloe deltoideodonta Baker'. Ah! Yes: why Baker? well, John Gilbert Baker (1834-1920) wrote a flora of Madagascar commented upon by Castillon.
The photo shows a flowering stem of var. ruffingiana in the Hortus Botanicus; the inset is a close-up of a drop of nectar. Nobody watching me, I tasted it. Exquisite sweetness! But I forget my role: Frogs don't like sweets.
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)
Ancient History has it that on Phoenician Sardinia the elderly - presumably grey-haired - and criminals were put to death by forcing them to drink an infusion of the carrot-shaped roots of Oenanthe crocata, this wine-aromatic herb with the pretty small red-stamened flowers. That infusion brings on muscle spasms often in the form of a horrible smile, the so-called Sardonic Grin.
Insects such as this Grey Mining Bee - I think 'vaga' - and many others have no problems with this Dropwort...
That 'tongue' - see inset - does look a bit like a Hoover, but it functions quite differently. Flies such as this Greenbottle don't chew or bite their food. Instead their mouthparts 'sponge', that is to say that they function by capillary action.
The labellum - the part of the 'tongue' that looks like the sucking end of our Hoover - has many grooves (visible only under a microscope) called pseudotracheae. If the food on its sweeping area is not sufficiently liquid they can emit a kind of saliva. The liquid mixture - in the case of these Alexanders flowers: nectar - moves upwards into Lucilia's narrow labium not by its own sucking action but through intermolecular forces in play between the liquid and the inner wall of the labial tube; so a bit like a sponge.
Hortus Botanicus Haren
Handheld
Tonemapped
cropped
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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...
Hortus Botanicus Haren
Handheld
Tonemapped
cropped
Portfolio ;
www.google.nl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=aheroy&source=...
Darckr;
DSMP
(Dont Steal My Pictures)
© Copyright : You cannot use my photos !
© Copyright : Você não pode usar !
© Derecho de Autor : No se puede usar !
© Copyright : Sie dürfen es nicht kopieren !
© Copyright : Vous ne pouvez pas utiliser mes photos !
© Copyright: Δεν μπορείτε να χρησιμοποιήσετε τις φωτογραφίες μου χωρίς την άδειά μου!
© حقوق النشر محفوظة. لا يمكنك استخدام الصو
Proudly this morning Walter den Hollander, gardener of the Hortus, took me to see the latest acquisitions in the 'closed' glass house. Just arrived is a huge collection of Pelargoniums acquired from a private collector. In one fell swoop this makes the Hortus one of the primary places for collecting and doing research on this plant. Indeed, scientists from the Wageningen University will do their pelargonium work with this collection.
Here's one of the 'new plants', Pelargonium abrotanifolium. It was first described by Nicolaus Joseph von Jacquin (1727-1817) in 1797.