Rawlings Conservatory – Part I

Earlier this week, my husband and I made the trek from our house up to the Rawlings Conservatory in Baltimore. We had seen it in passing 15-20 years ago when we were making trips to the Baltimore Zoo when our daughter was young – but we had never stopped and gone inside. It’s not as big as the Longwood Conservatives and is probably about a 100 years older than the Brookside Gardens Conservatories. It was a morning well spent. This post is about the desert room of the Conservatory and will be followed (eventually) by two more posts about the tropical room and the poinsettias.

There was an aloe in bloom. The color attracted my attention at first.

When I zoomed in for a closer look – the coloring became even more distinctive.

Periodically some rocks with rusty swirls were positioned among the cactus…adding other colors to the room. It reminded me of looking down on the terrain of some of the western US from an airplane window.

There was a tiny clump of cactus with seed pods about 1/4 inch across nestled in the spines. There were two elderly women that spotted them and made sure I saw them.

And then I continued my project photographing cactus spines. There were some different types than I had photographed before.

• Where the spines are along the edge of the pad like stem
• Where there are ‘leaves’ growing between the spines
• Pink pines on one, yellow spines on another, and white spines
• Different colors of spines (does it have something to do with the age of the spine?)

They all look so different from other plants...fodder for science fiction writers imaging aliens.

Spines and Thorns and Prickles

The conservatories at Brookside Gardens held more than model trains when I went last week. I was drawn to the cactus and took some macro shots of spines – like the ones I took at Bosque del Apache.

The Castor-Bean Begonia (Begonia ricinifolia) and prompted me to research differences between spines and thorns. I checked the Wikipedia article on the topic.  I discovered there are prickles and other semantics. Did you know that roses have prickles – not thorns? True thorns are modified branches or stems…so these red things on the Caster-Bean Magnolia are probably not thorns. But are they prickles? Maybe. The larger ones seem to be split into hair-like structures but the smaller one are barbs. I didn’t touch the plant to find out how sharp they were!

Desert Arboretum at Bosque del Apache

I spent some time in the Desert Arboretum at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge on our last full day at the Festival of the Cranes. Almost immediately I spotted a dragonfly that wasn’t sitting still but would pause long enough to be photographed. I was glad to have the extra power of the digital zoom on my new camera.

I also spotted some white-crowned sparrows which I had been told about on one of our tours…but hadn’t seen. They nest in the far north and are only in the US during the winter. They have very distinctive black and white stripes on their heads.

Rather than take pictures of whole cactus plants, I decided to look more closely at the spines. At first, I looked for color.

Then I looked more closely about how the spines were attached to the fleshy part of the cactus. I did a series that zoomed in more and more and discovered that the spines almost look like they pierce the flesh rather than grow out of it!

The image below are some prickly pear spines.

Some spines look sharper than others…or maybe it is the golden color of the spines that make them look more menacing. Again – there is a grayish mass (like a blob of putty) where they go into the cactus flesh.

Enough about spines. There was a gall on one of the plants that reminded me a little of the cedar apple rust gall I’d seen at Mt. Pleasant Farm last spring (described in this post).

The only bloom I saw was a tiny plant that looked like the top had been eaten.

I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the yucca pods. Yucca pods have always been one of my favorite seed pods. There are some I harvested about 40 years ago in a dried arrangement at my house!

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 4, 2016

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Exposure to chemicals in plastic and fungicides may irreversibly weaken children’s teeth – Another reason to pay close attention to Bisphenol A (BPA) and Vinclozolin in diets of children. Based on this study – this is not something that fluoride treatments or supplements would overcome.

Identifying Wildflowers: part one, part two, part three, part four – From Elizabeth’s Wildflower Blog. This series include a lot of practical advice for identifying wildflowers in the field (and confirming after you get home). I’ve been following Elizabeth’s blog since I was in Master Naturalist class with her --- learning about wildflowers.

Language of Women versus men – An analysis of language in Facebook messages shows that women use language that is warmer and more agreeable than men. The graphic associated with the study is worth a look.

Mysterious Cave Rings show Neanderthals liked to build – And more than 1,000 feet into the cave where it would have been very dark.

Kazakhstan’s treasure trove of wildly-flavored apples – Forests where apple trees are the predominant species!

Tidal Troubles in the Mid-Atlantic – A place where the sea level is rising at a much faster rate than almost anywhere in the US (except parts of Louisiana and South Florida)…and an explanation that goes back to the last ice age which left the area with a ‘fore-bulge’ – so the land is sinking from that then the ocean is rising too! The net is a predicted sea level rise of 3 feet around much of the Mid-Atlantic by 2100.

Three perfectly blue days at Crater Lake National Park – I haven’t been to this national park – yet. This is an article to look at again when I finally get around to planning the trip.

Swarms of Octopus are taking over the oceans – Cephalopods as ‘weeds of the sea’!

The Cactus Smuggler: Are Desert Plants Being Loved to Extinction? – Not a good trend and very difficult to change.

Low-salt diets may not be beneficial after all – Evidently the prior recommendation for low-salt diets was not based on data – the old recommendation was ‘popular thought’ rather than based on objective evidence! High-salt is still bad….but average (between 3 and 4 grams per day) is best!

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is a favorite outing during our Tucson vacations. The drive through the Tucson Mountain Park to get there just sets the stage for a day enjoying all the wonders of the museum. There are lots of different kinds of cactus – of course. I tend to look for cactus that have something a little different: bigger spines or spines in an interesting pattern, colored fruit or spines…or outer flesh that is not green at all. I like the landscapes of different kinds of cactus growing on hillsides.

 There is a hummingbird aviary and hummingbirds outside too.

There was an Anna’s hummingbird at a feeder that moved slightly and the color of the head changed completely. Hummingbirds have prism-like cells within the top layers of feathers on their heads…and the color we perceive varies based on the refraction from those prism-like cells.

Some other birds that we saw:a female Gila Woodpecker (since it did not have any red on its head)

And male Gambel’s Quail.

There were a few plants that were blooming. I didn’t notice the aphids on the close-up I took of one small flower until I looked at the image on my computer monitor!

And then there are rocks…some with brilliant colors

And some just a collection of small stones between plants

And an outcrop on a hillside – red with its iron.

Tomorrow I’ll write a second post about the Raptor Free Flight programs we saw on our visit to this museum last month.

Tucson Botanical Garden

We visited the Tucson Botanical Garden back in January 2015 (did three posts about it: butterflies, garden and poison dart frogs. There is a new building that is the garden entrance and gift shop – with a lot more room than the older structure that was originally a house. We knew about the butterfly exhibit from last year and headed for that as soon as it was open since the air temperature was still pretty cool outside. Inside the greenhouse it was steamy and warm. I enjoyed the orchids and other tropical plants.

There were fewer butterflies than last year but one sat on my husband’s hat for a very long time. Can you see the curled proboscis?

Another sat high on some foliage and posed with wings wide open. The markings make the upper wing look pleated.

I only saw one poison dart frog and did not get a good picture. Disappointing. But….the docent told me that they have tadpoles; if they are successful raising them the population will be larger next year. The poison dart frog live multiple years and were originally brought to the butterfly house to eat fruit flies attracted to the fruit put out for the butterflies.

Outdoors, I noticed better signage this year for birds, lizards, and material for basket making. The signage is tile or protected by glass to survive the very hot temperatures of Tucson in the summer.

I saw a tiled bench with a pomegranate motif

And then the plant itself!

Arizona is famous for its geology and its deserts so I took a number of rocks/minerals along with desert plants.

Some of the colorful rocks look like they’ve been painted but the crystals of the mineral are often visible!

There were two special cactus images this time: a colorful one

And a dead one (for some reason – the curves in this piece of cactus stem appealed to me…maybe I should use it as a starting point for a Zentangle pattern).

Zooming – January 2016

The zooming post has more birds, cactus and butterflies this month. Can you find the turkey…the quail…the hummingbird…the barn owl…and the blue jay?

If you want to see an enlarged version of a collage – click on it and a window with the enlarged version will appear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Intimate Landscapes – January 2016

This is the fourth month for my Intimate Landscapes series (after reading Eliot Porter’s Intimate Landscapes book (available online here)) featuring images from January that are: smaller scale but not macro, multiple species, and artsy.

There is only one picture from Maryland this month – the frozen edge of a stream with pebbles showing, dark leaves caught on the surface, green and brown plants around the edge.

All the other images are from Arizona this month…I’ve saving the wintery ones for February since I had so much to share from Arizona. The colors are often subdued- the greens of saguaro and desert brush, the browns of twists of dead wood and occasional water, the whites of rocks.

And then there are sudden bursts of color that draw the eye – oranges…and yellows.

I made a slide show of the other intimate landscapes that appealed to be in Tucson – a vine growing on a purple wall, the color variation in prickly pear, a lone flower in front of a white wall, a very small cactus surrounded by black rocks and fallen leaves from its nurse tree that shades it during the hottest part of the summer, small saguaro getting big enough to show among the palo verde and cholla, groupings of cactus with colorful spines, young saguaros lined up in rows between lighter leaved plants and yellow flowers with palo verde in the background….such are the intimate landscapes around Tucson.