May 30 -- botanical garden conservatory, 2

.

A couple of wild and fuzzy guys.  Note cross-section, bottom left.  We'll have a closer look in a minute, but first, a couple of closer crops of stuff at the top of this image.

Someday I'll have to come here and collect shots of different spikes, and patterns of spikes.....  Three quite different takes on spikes, just in this one shot.  Look at the size of the ones in the centers of the stars!  !!!

Maybe another story about stripes?  (Yet more different spikes in this one....)

Here's that closer look at the cross section I promised.  Isn't it cool that they left this here for us to study?  Note fuzz on star points, particularly at the bottom.  Tassels?  Or pompoms, perhaps.

So interesting, the different choices plants make about how to do flowers.  Some plants are covered with flowers, and some do one.  I guess there are -- or will be -- more than one.  We can see buds, just above the flower.

Goodness.

Similar colors, in a totally different object.

Hmm.

I wonder if those sticky-outy things used to be flowers?  Will be flowers?  Are something else entirely?  The red ones and the greenish ones look pretty different.  Perhaps they have different purposes?

You can see that things are neatly labeled.  Unfortunately, it never crossed my mind to try to document what I was looking at.

Feeling a deep respect for the individuals in this room.  I try to not touch anything, in a botanical garden, especially since taking What a Plant Knows.  We learned that plants DO know when they are touched, and they do not like it.  There's no loving touch for plants, in nature.  Touch is probably going to be an assault.  The more plants are touched, the more their growth is stunted...............

I don't touch the plants in special collections, and in this room, I really didn't want the plants to touch me, either.

I can get oblivious to my surroundings when taking pics.  I tried to keep my wits about me, harder than usual, taking pics in this room, where touching the plants accidentally could be ... unpleasant ... for me, and for the plants.

Here's a much smaller agave.  This was less than 2' across.  Note the variety of other plants we can see in this pic.  The plants in the corners are totally different from each other, and from the agave.........

Another little handful-size plant, with embellishments on its ridges.  I should come back to see these little guys in bloom....

Another little one (though somewhat bigger than the above, if I remember correctly.  I wonder who goes after it -- spikes AND fuzz.  Two different defenses, against two different bad guys?

For once, I got a mise en scene shot!  The next few are closeups of things going on in this shot.

Some more seriously long spikes.

These are several inches long. 

Cute little fuzzy guy, with longer hair on top.

Another fuzz+spikes combination.  I bet these are buds at the top.  Another enticement to make repeat visit soon!

This is the size of a cantaloupe.  What an attractive plant!

Gracious.  I think this one takes the prize for the longest spikes, compared to body size.  I think many of the spikes are longer than the diameter of this little guy!

And some of its spikes are hooks!  Yikes!

.