Archive for the 'General Gardening' Category
Thursday, July 28th, 2011
If you don’t have your own electron microscope, you’ll enjoy this entertaining video from TED and an accompanying article in the UK’s Guardian. Jonathan Drori showcases some of the most incredible pollination strategies among the world’s quarter-million flowering plants. Naturally, orchids are some of the stars of the show. With dazzling photos, his talk highlights […]
Categories: General Gardening, In the News, Videos
Comments: 10 Comments
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
With late spring rains followed by warm temps, our urban garden is offering lots of blooms for today’s solstice. The flowers range from a small, pastel Epidendrum to an Orchid Cactus with brilliant red blossoms as big as dinner plates. Fittingly for the first day of summer, we’re having a heat wave. I’ve got my […]
Categories: General Gardening, Photos
Comments: 5 Comments
Wednesday, June 15th, 2011
Urban gardens are more popular than ever, and our little patch of San Francisco exemplifies the trend. In the back yard, this great Masdevallia species has been blooming for 6 weeks. This flower has faded from its most brilliant, but it’s still a vivid pink. The next photos show a white calla lily and a […]
Categories: General Gardening, Photos
Comments: 4 Comments
Thursday, February 24th, 2011
Vallarta Botanical Gardens has orchids, chocolate, and vanilla to enjoy, but it also has a painful side. Pointy cactus spines and sharp yucca leaves abound. Bougainvillea flowers crown vines with large, nasty thorns. No matter how beautiful, they can puncture and pierce. The gardens are perfectly safe, as long as you stay on paths and […]
Categories: Botanical Gardens, General Gardening, Photos
Comments: 7 Comments
Thursday, February 10th, 2011
Chocolate is a Valentine’s Day requirement for chocoholics like me, and is made from the seeds of a small tropical tree. It’s not an orchid, but it is a fascinating plant that’s long been cultivated in Central and South America. My favorite food comes from cocoa pods, the fruit of Theobroma cacao, also known as […]
Categories: General Gardening, Photos
Comments: 4 Comments
Sunday, August 29th, 2010
No, they’re not orchids, but the nasturtiums growing in our back garden look so great that they deserve a post. Nasturtiums are also known as Indian Cress, Monks Cress, or Tropaeolum, which is their scientific name. California gardeners sometimes take them for granted because they’ve naturalized on the coast, and are often found growing wild. […]
Categories: General Gardening, Photos
Comments: 3 Comments
Monday, July 5th, 2010
With a small deck and backyard garden, Dave and I have a limited amount of green space in our San Francisco apartment. We make up for lack of square footage with plant density, and in our mild climate, there’s always something growing and blooming. But our urban jungle really comes alive in summer. Among this […]
Categories: General Gardening, Photos
Comments: 5 Comments
Sunday, April 25th, 2010
If you’ve ever decided that a weed was pretty, you’ll understand the botanical definition of “volunteer.” A volunteer is a plant that arrives in a garden, usually as seed, blown by wind or carried by bird. It’s a weed if you don’t want to keep it; it’s a volunteer if you do. My rule of […]
Categories: General Gardening, Photos
Comments: 4 Comments
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
As temperatures have warmed, and heavy winter rains have given way to light spring showers, our garden is coming alive. First, this bloom on an Abutilon, or Flowering Maple, looks like a brilliant red bell announcing the season. Next, this Iris is a California native we bought years ago at a Strybing Arboretum plant sale. […]
Categories: Botanical Gardens, General Gardening, Photos
Comments: 7 Comments
Sunday, February 21st, 2010
Besides orchids, few flowers inspire more superlatives than Heliconias. These blooms scream tropical. Sometimes called lobster-claws, wild plantains, or false birds-of-paradise, their bizarre flowers have wild colors and shapes. These remarkable blooms are actually small flowers encased in large, colorful bracts. Some varieties have flower spikes that grow more than 8 feet (2.4 m) long. […]
Categories: Botanical Gardens, General Gardening, Photos
Comments: 5 Comments