The Mighty Gunnera By Cecilia Ayres  The Bellevue Botanical Garden is home to several Gunnera tinctoria plants. With their giant, serrated green leaves, thick, spiky stalks, and vibrant red flower spikes, they are easy to spot. The leaves can grow to be four feet across and stand at eight feet tall in the right conditions. These unique features are not only stunning, but characteristics that date back to the Cretaceous Period—yes, gunneras were around in the time of dinosaurs! Pollen from early gunnera plants has been discovered in fossils that date back to the Late Cretaceous period in P ..read more

By Kate Sorensen What is “Plant Awareness Disparity”? Plant Awareness Disparity (PAD) is a term proposed by Kathryn Parsley to replace an older term: “plant blindness.” To summarize her proposal, there is a disparity between how Euro-centric people notice plants in their environment versus how they notice animals. This disparity is based on attention, attitude, knowledge, and relative interest towards plants. She wrote: “The disparity between how often people notice plants compared to how often people notice animals is what causes plants to be placed in the background and animals to be placed ..read more

City Nature Challenge City Nature Challenge is an international four-day bioblitz that encourages folks to get outside, take as many pictures of plants and animals they find in the wild, and upload them to their iNaturalist app. This event is ordinarily a friendly challenge between cities, but this year the organizers want to embrace the healing power of nature and encourage the collaborative aspect of the City Nature Challenge. The Challenge takes place in 2 parts: For 2021, April 30-May 3 ,taking pictures of wild plants and animals. April 30-May 9, identifying what was found. Lear ..read more

Intro to Botanical Names Part Two: PronunciationBy Cynthia Welte  In the first blog article on botanical names, we looked at how plant names are constructed. Now … time to get brave and say them out loud!  A note on my phonetic spellings: the Æ or æ symbol is an “a” as it is pronounced in cat or Seattle. Accented syllables are in all caps. This isn’t in any way official but is how it makes sense to me. Plant names stem from such a variety of origins that there are unfortunately no hard and fast rules that will apply to all pronunciations. Believe me, we all wish there were! I’m not o ..read more

Intro to Botanical Names Part One: Understanding NamesBy Cynthia Welte  Those of us who work closely with plants are frequently asked why we use the long, hard-to-remember scientific names instead of simpler common names. To illustrate why, what comes to mind when I ask you to picture a cedar tree? You might be thinking of any of a dozen conifers. But if I’m talking about Thuja plicata, there is only plant I could mean: the Western red cedar (also called Pacific red cedar and giant arborvitae.) Multiple common names for the same plant cause further confusion. Another example: what I know ..read more

Putting Your Garden to Bed for Winter By Cynthia Welte Is your garden ready for winter? Work you do now will lay groundwork for your garden next year. Much like returning from vacation to a clean home, starting spring in a prepped garden gives you energy and makes the work more pleasant. (Plus, it’s nice to look out at a tidy garden over the gray winter months.) There are a few simple tasks that you can do now to protect your plants and soil. They are: Plant: if you have some plants or bulbs not in the ground yet, it’s not too late! Fall is the best time to get many plants in the ground, part ..read more

Leaf Diamonds By Barb Williams Drip tips You may have noticed that here in the Pacific Northwest it rains often, which is one reason we have such a variety of healthy plants in the Bellevue Botanical Garden. When it rains, or when watery dew drops collect on the leaves, you may notice the sparkle of water droplets shimmering like diamonds on surfaces. Or they may be precariously hanging from “drip tips” at the leaf’s end. Many leaves end in a sharp point. The points are called “drip tips.” They, along with the central vein, enable the water to run off the leaf blade (surface). This is import ..read more

Are you curious about plants and animals? Are you always asking questions about the natural world? Do you like being outdoors and having fun? Then check out the American Public Garden Association’s “Plant Heroes” website. On the website you will find: Videos to learn more about moths, beetles, and fungi and explore each species like a scientist! Read comics about insects and plants Activity books with word puzzles, coloring pages, and other activities related to the comic books Lesson plans for educators Bellevue Botanical Garden is a member of the American Public Garden Association, which ..read more

Leaf Magic  by Barb Williams At every season of the year there is Leaf Magic to be found at the Bellevue Botanical Garden. You will find leaves of different colors, shapes and sounds. The Nature of Sitting by Pam Beyette Treat yourself by sitting in the leaf chair opposite the Ground Cover Garden waterfall (this chair is actually an art piece titled “The Nature of Sitting” by artist Pam Beyette). As you sit, notice the colorful leaves as they whirl, dance and float to the ground during autumn. When you walk through the dry leaves, they crinkle underfoot making a delightful sound. In win ..read more

One Corner: Past and PresentBy Cynthia Welte The Shorts House under construction; the patio and tree would be installed in the foreground. The log cabin to the left is where the Shorts lived when they moved to this property. Cal and Harriet Shorts’ home was built in 1954. As avid gardeners, they planted many trees and shrubs all around their home, including a Pacific silver fir (Abies amabilis) on the southwest corner of the patio. Sadly, this tree struggled as it aged, and had to be removed in 2002. The Shorts House in the early days of the Botanical Garden. (circa 1992) The Pacific silver ..read more