I am taking a break this month, reposting previously published blogs. This one is from February 2013, the first month of this blog. And, I could not resist som editing, especially giving credit to Edmond Albius for discovering vanilla needed to be cross-pollinated.       Good vanilla is one of my favorite flavors, and the idea of "plain vanilla," vanilla as the no-flavor flavor, has always been somehow annoying.  And it wasn't always the case. The vanilla orchid is the plant in the middle,  hanging down over the tree branch. (In the  Conservatory at t ..read more

Long ago, when plants began exploiting animals to carry pollen between flowers, they encountered butterflies. Butterfly adults fed mainly on sugar water (nectar). Flowers adapted to this by offering little cups of nectar, positioned so that a feeding butterfly would get pollen on itself--on the proboscis or face or wings, depending on the flower--which then pollinated the next flower of the same species when the butterfly moved to find more nectar there. I said "exploit" but for most flowers and butterflies it is a reasonable trade, pollen movement for food, making butterflies a major group of ..read more

The blazingstars, genus Mentzelia, are an American group, but especially western North American. Some species are found in the Caribbean, Central, and South America but 85 of the approximately 95 species are North American. If you live in the eastern half of the United States, you can be forgiven for never having heard of this group, because only three species have ranges east of the Mississippi. (Those are a Florida endemic and two found east to Illinois). Colorado has 25 species, almost all in the western half of the state, west of the Rocky Mountains; only four species grow on the eastern p ..read more

Recently at the University of Nebraska's Biological Station, Cedar Point, at the Station's 50th anniversary, I failed to take very many photos of buildings and people. Here are a few of the photos of plants I took, instead. buffalo burr, Solanum rostratum For example, buffalo burr (Solanum rostratum, tomato family Solanaceae). Native to North America, it gets its name from its presence in areas denuded of other plants by bison, and since then, by cattle.This big-flowered plant has impressive spines (look next to uppermost flower in the photo above). The burs will stick to animal ha ..read more

The New York Times (11/20/24) reported funding of research on whether cannabis extracts can effectively treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and commented that this is a first because as a Schedule 1 Narcotic, permission to study cannabis has been difficult to impossible. That set off a lot of memories for me.  marijuana (Canabis sativa) amid weeds Cannabis also called hemp, marijuana, weed and more (Cannabis sativa, marijuana family, Cannabaceae) has been illegal in the United States since the 1930s, though the specific laws have changed. I was never interested ..read more

Teasels, Dipsacus fullonum and Dipsacus sativus,  in the teasel family, Dipsacaceae, for centuries were essential to the clothing industry. Today, in North America, they are noxious weeds. teasel showing the seed heads Teasel plants are generally biennials, producing big leaves the first year, growing tall and flowering the second year, dying after flowering. They can grow 6' high. The flower heads are coarse, protected by spines, soft when flowering, scratchy as the seeds ripen inside. The white, pink or purple flowers open in ring. Teasel flower, from wikipedia  T ..read more

Bees are numerous and are good pollinators, so many plant species have flowers tailored to bees. Bumblebee (Bombus) pollinating golden banner (Thermopsis montana) For plants, pollination is about reproduction: the pollinator must carry pollen (containing the sperm) to the stigma, where it will grow down the style to the ovary (containing the egg). Outcrossing, reproduction between different genetic individuals, is better than self-pollination because the progeny are more diverse, better able to live in a complex world. Thus, good pollinators do not wander around having gotten pollen o ..read more

You do know that the artichoke is the immature flower head of a thistle, don't you? It is a strange vegetable, with layers of leaves you tear off to eat a bit of "meat" at the base, but that doesn't make most people think of thistles. Nevertheless, the artichoke, Cynara cardunculus, sunflower family Asteraceae, is the cultivated version of a big thistle from around the Mediterranean, the wild ones called cardoons or artichoke thistles. artichoke (Cynara cardunculus) in grocery store Artichokes have been eaten in southern Europe since at least ancient Greece. When and how they were dom ..read more

Just as in North America, the prevailing winds bring moisture from the Pacific that drops on the mountains, making a dry zone at their base in eastern Oregon and Washington and on the Colorado Front Range, so in South America, the winds from the Pacific leave their water on the west side of the Andes and at the base of the mountains, on the east, it is very dry. This effect is the most dramatic as you approach the tropics, in North America in Arizona and northern Mexico, in South America in northwestern Argentina's Jujuy and Salta Provinces.   Rocky landscape of Salta Province &n ..read more

Tansy is a small plant with bright yellow flowers and a spicy smell (scientific name, Tanacetum vulgare sunflower family, Asteraceae). It is native to western Asia but long ago became an herb and spice that was grown throughout Europe and then transported by Europeans all over the world. Today we know it more as a garden flower or roadside weed than as a flavoring or medicine, but it is all of those.  common tansy, Tanacetum vulgare Tansy is readily confused with tansy ragwort. So much so that my google search for tansy pulled up several pages where the page seemed to describe ta ..read more