November 25 -- botanical garden, part 3

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Now we are in the desert room.

I wonder how often they water in here.  I bet these plants don't have puddles on their leaves very often!

There are some seriously big beefy plants in this room!

Strong sunlight, on a heavily defended plant.

Look at the top.  Isn't this interesting?  The fuzzy soft-looking stuff, and then the dark spiky things?  What do you want to bet these are flower buds........  I am definitely thinking I need to head back out to the Botanical Garden in a few weeks, to see what's different.........

I bet these are flower buds, too, on top.....

This cute little thing is about handful-size.

Lots of variety in this room, too.

Look at the hooks and shadows................

Love this frosty blue color, especially with the brown dotted edge.

And this!  This is my favorite plant of the day!

Love the color, love the appearance of fuzziness (I didn't touch it), love the fang-y spikes along the edges of the leaves, but the thing that slays me is the texture on the leaves that exactly mimics the spikey edges!

I mean.  Is this excellent, or what???  It's like a New Mexican sunset -- you couldn't make it up, because no one would believe you!

I walked around to the side, to get a bit closer, and from that angle, the spikes were blood red.

Oh my.

Can't you hear it calling?  "Seymour......"

"Seymour.........."

Ok.  Tearing myself away...........  (I will surely look at that one again, when I visit in a few weeks!)



Hooks and shadows..........

This is some meaningful defense.  Rings of straight spikes, surrounding wicked hooks.....

Here's something much less threatening.

Aw, look, a tiny flower.

I think this is my favorite middle-distance shot of the day.  I was particularly looking at the plant that looks a bit like the end of an open book (we're looking at the bottom edges of the pages, which are all splayed out). I didn't notice at all what was behind that plant.

Now that I see it "on the big screen," I really like the way we can see so much variety in the other plants.  I love the curvy leaves of that beefy stripey thing in the background.  Especially in contrast to the reddish poky looking thing in the bottom right, and the round blobby leaves above the left-hand front poky thing.....

Hmmm.  A flower?

Looking up -- whoa.  There's another flower, stuck in the spikes.

Stepping back, we can see the whole plant.  The flowers were on the bulbous one with the spiky trunk and branches.

Flower!

These are cool.

In fact, the whole plant is very attractive.  (And apparently less scary than a lot of the inhabitants of this room!)

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