Sunday, July 20, 2014

July 6 -- back to the botanical garden

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We thought the agave was blooming, so we went back to the botanical garden.

Last time we were here, we saw coleus through a kaleidoscope.  This time they had a collection of succulents to look at.  Cool........



Here's what we were looking at.........



One of the plants in the excellent collection above was blooming.......



Here's the agave.  Not, alas, actually blooming.  Sheesh.

They say there are over 1000 buds.



There were rather a lot of people in the desert section of the conservatory.

We looked around a bit.

Love the curvy leaves......



Here's a very weird plant.  One long ribbon-like leaf, growing out and out from a strange lumpy whitish thing.





I wonder what this looks like when it blooms........



It was crowded enough, and hot enough, in the desert room that we decided to go outside and walk around in those gardens for a while.

Nice, eh?



The botanical gardens has a quite large collection of bonsai.

I bet this one needs a couple of snips.....



Perhaps I'll remember to try to come see this one next spring when the cherries are blooming.



Cotoneaster works well for bonsai, I think.  The leaves are small, and the flowers and fruit are small, too.  This one looks a bit like an apple tree.  (Only an apple tree wouldn't have this habit........)



I like that this maple's new leaves are so red.



I like this one.  It looks so healthy.



Despite the split bark......



I could never get into bonsai.  It takes too much patience, for one thing (I like my instant gratification), and the "plant torture" aspect sort of creeps me out.  Below is the upper left corner of the shot above.



Ok, back out into the big flower garden we had a glimpse of above.

Sedums, and I think that blue stuff is a grass.



So pretty.  These flowers look a lot like the yellow ones we saw in my neighborhood a few days ago, but the foliage is totally different.  This is what I think of as "typical low-growing sedum foliage."



Nice.  Love the different textures and heights...........



I think this is a California poppy.  There is some of it in the desert room in the conservatory -- I took pics of it the last time we were at the botanical gardens.  These are outside.



That whitish circle, upper right, is what's left after all the petals fall off.







Ageratum.



I'd never looked at these up close and personal before.  They start all flat, like the one in the upper right, and then they sprout these little flowers......  I'd always thought the long fringy things were petals, but from here they look like some of the flowers' naughty bits.



Bee balm.



Here's some more of that really big plant we saw as we were leaving the peony garden at the Arboretum.  This is taller than I am.  Love the curvy/curly leaves.



Hey!  There's a butterfly on the butterfly weed!  I don't recognize this one.  The backs of the wings were orange, and the fronts (bottoms?) were brown and white (both sides with black).



This one is a bit sharper, but you can't see the orange side.



A river of butterfly weed.


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