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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
5 Days Ago
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Norm -- Chopping wood?! Is your shoulder OK for that?
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
02-17-2021, 10:48 AM
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Gorgeous color, Walt!
Couple more from the garden here...
Orange jasmine, Murraya paniculata. Not a real jasmine but the flowers are extremely fragrant, they smell a bit like orange blossoms. The plant is related to citrus but only the birds like the small fruits. Shrub or small tree, blooms several times a year.
Next, Oxalis triangularis, red oxalis. Foliage is an amazing red-purple color. The little pink and white flowers only last a couple of days but it blooms on and off during the year.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
02-13-2021, 02:46 PM
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Three orchids and a tropical "lily" (actually I think it's related to Amaryllis)
Guarianthe (Cattleya) Guatemalensis
Brassavola nodosa -- "Lady of the Night" -- blow-you-way fragrance after dark; perfumes the entire yard!
Dendrobium senile -- "old man" orchid, the stems are covered with wispy white hair
Eucharis grandiflora -- "Amazon lily", flowers are typically nodding, a treat to find one facing more or less forward/up
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
02-13-2021, 02:30 PM
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Eugenia uniflora, "surinam cherry", known commonly hereabouts as "cherry".. A very common hedge plant, these were planted by my Dad in the late 1950s or early 1960s to screen the patio. Almost indestructible, they've survived all the hurricanes, the handful of frosts/freezes, the deluges and droughts. These little flowers will eventually produce cute little edible fruits that look like tiny (1 inch, 2cm max) glossy pumpkins. Quite tart when orange/red, very sweet when purple/black. No fruit on the hedge right now, I'll shoot some when they get going.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
02-12-2021, 10:02 AM
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Beau and Panda, two of the indoor cats, both rescues.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
02-11-2021, 05:59 PM
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Ooooh -- is that last one a blue-tail skink?
We used to have a fair population of them when I was a kid. Didn't see one for decades and then encountered one at my former workplace about 5-6 years ago. Haven't seen one since. No idea why they disappeared, maybe the big anoles wiped them out :(
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
02-06-2021, 08:53 AM
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Huzzah to all rescue pets, and the good folks who do it. All of our cats are rescues.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
02-04-2021, 10:27 AM
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Now baobabs are really strange trees, no mistake! Fairchild has two or three of them (I forget, we haven't been there in nearly a year because of COVID closures, etc, although I understand they have recently relaxed some restrictions for members). Not nearly as huge as many in Africa, of course, but very interesting just the same. If we ever get back over there (I hope so, soon, it's a fave destination) I'll try to photograph one of them. One I recall is pretty substantial.
They have a big collection of Euphorbias, too, in a couple of "desert" plots. My former boss has some interesting ones as well. I might excavate a few images from that library, if nobody would mind their being shot with a different camera mark (you know, the "N" word). One (of many) things I did there was document the garden, so I have a big library of "their" images (I shot 98% of them with the company D80).
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
02-04-2021, 06:42 AM
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Aloes are closely related to agaves, which are western hemisphere plants, but as with so many, they are widely distributed nowadays. There's one, Agave parryi, which has a one-time bloom spike similar to the one in your image. Yes, they would have a basal rosette of fleshy leaves. As for "trees", I'm sure there is a botanical definition but I don't know what it is. Trees are woody, I know that, and many plants called "tree" aren't, in fact, strictly trees. Bananas come to mind, they can be quite large and "tree-like", but they aren't trees at all. Not woody, for one thing. Anyway, many agaves (and the larger aloes) are sometimes called "century" plants. They are very slow-growing and only bloom once in their lifetime, not necessarily after a "century" of growing but certainly after decades. And of course Agave americana is the plant cultivated for tequila production.
Euphorbias are interesting. Some, like that one, are thorny succulents. But poinsettias are euphorbias, too. There are a lot of them cultivated as ornamentals. Some are very handsome, that one certainly is.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
02-03-2021, 12:18 PM
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Very interesting. Looks much like the infloresence (flowering stem) of some agaves. Is it really a tree? How peculiar!
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
02-02-2021, 03:19 PM
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Orchid nomenclature is arcane and complicated. "Aliceara" is an artificial, hybrid genus, the components are multiple genera in the Oncidium alliance. Offhand I don't know the details and wouldn't bore you with them even if I did. This isn't a group of orchids that I know a lot about... I don't generally grow them. This plant was a door prize or somesuch at a club event, nothing to do with it but tie it to the palm and let it do its thing. Seems happy enough, neh?
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
02-02-2021, 12:53 PM
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Couple more of the outside gang, neither related to Roxy... Callie (short for "calico tail" and Dolly
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
02-02-2021, 12:50 PM
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Hybrid orchid, Aliceara Peggy Ruth Carpenter 'Pink Lady', growing attached to the trunk of a palm in the garden
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
02-02-2021, 12:46 PM
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Yet another clerodendrum... this is Clerodendrum quadriloculare. Jawbreaker name, indeed. Mostly large shrubs but they can get to be small trees, very ornamental with dark green foliage, purple on the undersides of the leaves. Winter blooming, the individual flowers are only about an inch (2.5cm) across, on very long pedicels in a very showy cluster. Gorgeous thing, but like many clerodendrums, it can be very invasive, sprouts new plants from the roots. I find little ones all across the property, yards and yards from the adult plants. Common names for it are "popcorn" and "shooting star"...
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
01-26-2021, 01:48 PM
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Empress of all she surveys! Beautiful lady!
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
01-15-2021, 02:50 PM
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Indeed, we have more than our share of invasive, "foreign" critters and plants here!
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
01-11-2021, 06:18 PM
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Beautiful! Boy, they get around, from South America to South Africa! Alstroemerias, popular as cut flowers, too.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
01-07-2021, 07:18 AM
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It's amazing, no wonder early collectors/observers thought them different species. The female is solid dark red, with some deep blue feathers on her wings and a blue-black beak. A gorgeous bird! The male is bright green with a yellow-orange beak. He's handsome but no match for the female. When he first bought them, Boss had a pair, but for some reason -- nobody knows what happened -- the male passed one night. Boss got another male but she won't have anything to do with him. He's very neurotic as a result, pulls his feathers out.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
01-05-2021, 02:31 PM
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We have a number of naturalized parrot populations here in south Florida. Not native at all, but perfectly at home... "quaker" parakeets, "monk" parakeets, several different kinds of amazons and conures, even some macaws. I once saw a small cockatiel in the back yard, of course it was gone by the time I got the camera. In this immediate neighborhood we rarely see anything besides the conures and parakeets. Some are escaped pets. some are the remnants of a huge tropical aviary at the zoo destroyed by hurricane Andrew. My former boss keeps a lot of parrots on his property, including macaws, conures, amazons, and he even has a couple of eclectus. Wouldn't call them a pair, the female won't have anything to do with the male (much to his frustration). But the female is absolutely gorgeous, Floyd reminded me of her (a bit, she's solid dark red with dark blue wings).
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
01-05-2021, 01:26 PM
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Been there and done that, absolutely. Never mind the processing bill! Nowadays I joke about going out to "waste film", but I confess many things about digital have spoiled me. One of these days I'll have to excavate the slide binders and see if there's anything worth preserving...
But great shots of the eucalypt trunk, thanks. The one at Fairchild often has the most amazing colors...red, green, orange, purple.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
01-05-2021, 07:07 AM
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Indeed, a very regal pose! Beautiful lady.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
01-05-2021, 07:03 AM
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Very interesting! Is it a rainbow eucalyptus? Next time we get over to the botanical garden I want to try to get an image of the one they have there. Amazing tree.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
01-04-2021, 07:40 AM
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Very well done! A most handsome subject, too.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
01-01-2021, 05:50 PM
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Couple of Clerodendrums. The first one is known, in cultivation, as C. smithianum, but this isn't a legitimate name. It's closely related to C. wallichii (might be the same, for all I know), but it has two common names, "light bulb plant" and "bridal veil". The "light bulbs" are the flower buds, a few of which are visible. These form and decorate the plant for a week or more before the flowers open. Second one is C. splendens, commonly known as "glory bower". There are several color forms. On this one, the flowers are red, the purple thingys are the bracts that enclose the buds prior to the flowers' opening.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
12-31-2020, 01:24 PM
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Two more of the gang... father and son, Nacho and Nachito. Recently Nacho decided to move a couple of houses down the street, we're not sure why, but he deigns to visit once in a while. Neither is Roxy's, both predate her arrival in the colony.
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