May 30 -- botanical garden conservatory, 3

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I mentioned stone plants a couple of days ago.  These are less than 3" across.

These are small, too, but bigger than the stone plants.  Maybe 4" tall?

Here's something else that's sorta tree-like. 

A closer look.  The tree-ish plant has fruit........

Still closer.  Note spikes on its neighbor.

Spikes on curvy leaves.  These spikes look positively friendly, in comparison with some we've seen in this room!

Incipient flower.

Another flower, with buds beneath.

I bet there used to be flowers here, and that these empty cups may be developing into fruits.

Goodness.  I really wished I had looked at the rest of this plant.  But I didn't.

Another mise en scene!  Hooray.

A closer look.

Closer still.........

Another hairy guy.

With the agave we came to see, in the background.  Another agave must be on its way to blooming, too.  There are two tall stalks in the upper right corner of the above.

A complete coincidence, that the last pic I took in the desert room showed the agave again.  I certainly didn't notice, when I took the pic.



And now for something completely different -- here's some black bamboo in the temperate room.  I love black bamboo........

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May 30 -- botanical garden conservatory, 2

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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!

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May 30 -- botanical garden conservatory 1

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I get email from the University about the Botanical Garden and the Arboretum.  They let me know when important flowers are about to happen, like the peony garden at the Arb, or an agave in the conservatory at the garden, which lives 80-100 years, and blooms at the very end of its life.

On the 30th, we went to see the agave.  It's an amazing plant.  It's large.  It's stripey.

Its flower stalk goes up, and up....

And up.

Through the roof.

Doesn't it remind you of asparagus?  Someone told me it is actually a relative of asparagus....

I was disappointed that it wasn't actually blooming.  Buds, but no flowers, on the 30th.  Perhaps we'll make another trek over to the other side of town and try again in a week or so.



Did I mention the agave is large?

Every time I go to the conservatory at the Botanical Gardens, I think I should go more often.  The conservatory is a treasure trove of wonders.  I bounce from one thing to the next -- "Look at this!"  "Look at that!"  "Wow, what about *this* one!"

Just here in the desert room, I could tell stories about spikes.  I could tell stories about habit.  I could tell stories about stripes, about flowers, about size......

But I would have to go more often.

When I only go once every year or so, it's sensory overload.  I skip and jump from one thing to the next, without any thought at all to coherent story-telling.

Until I get home and start editing all those pics...............



I have a houseplant that has a fat base like this one.  Only mine is about 6" across, at the bottom, and this one is well over 2'.

Look what's going on with the leaves of that sort of grass-ish thing in front of the fat-bottom thing!



Cool!

When you visit the conservatory, you keep seeing things from different angles, at different times during your visit.  It never occurred to me, on the 30th, to try to get distance shots that would let me be more organized later.........

I *think* this may be the top of the fat-bottom plant (taken from another part of the room, many minutes later than the above).  But I am not sure.  My houseplant doesn't look anything like this at the top.

Another agave.  My daughter said its leaves were bigger around than her thigh. 

The agave wasn't blooming, but a lot of other plants were.  These flowers remind me of the plumeria we saw in Hawaii in 1974, but I think plumeria's habit is nothing like this.  Note spikes on trunk.....

Not all the plants in the conservatory are large.  Some are very small.  I think the largest of these green clusters of leaves were about 2" across.

I wonder if this is a volunteer.  It is much more delicate and much less substantial than most of the plants in this dry room.

Here's something else I could go on and on about -- fuzz............

This tiny one doesn't look too happy.  Shriveled.  I wonder if this branch is near the end of its time?  Its leaves remind me of the much-bigger "stone plants" in the conservatory....

I wonder if this is supposed to be this color, or if it may be on its way out?

More flowers.  That purply gray at the top is its stem, and it's got some good-sized spikes.  The flowers are little -- about half an inch across?

Isn't this the cutest?  Its a comfortable handful-size.  It looks like something someone sewed from hand-dyed stripey fabric, with tarnished brass beads on the ridges.

From another angle -- and look, it has a baby.  Or maybe that's someone else's baby?

More flowers.  I'm happy with the contrasting shapes, and with the colors.  That blue sky is nice, with the green and red.....

Actual leafy-looking leaves, but not arranged in a way that is familiar to Michigan eyes.

And check out the spikes!

This may be my favorite plant in the garden.  Love the shapes, textures, colors.........  One of these clusters is about 12-15" across.

It can't be a coincidence that the patterns on the leaves are just like the spiky edges of the leaves....  I wonder how these patterns are printed on the leaves.......

Something sort of tree-shaped.  Sort of.

Love the colors, and the repeated shapes...........

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