lunachick

has my flower bloomed yet? ...has it? has it?

godfry n. glad

Forgiveness unnecessary... I'm surprised I missed the identification of Algernon in my response. It was important, after all, the author (or the publisher) used the rat for the title. And...my acknowledgement for correction was for the title of Sacks' correct book; I knew that I was guessing when I wrote the "Man...Hat".

Well... Actually, I don't (gardenwise, that is). Not big ones, at least. But I like to make some up for dramatic effect.

.Pining for Oz? Or elsewhere?

Hmmm... Sounds like home to me. Only the locals here would change the modifier for gloomy from "mildly" to "exceedingly".

Wow...Really climate dependant, eh? English Ivy, the bad architect's best friend, was recently officially declared a Noxious Weed here in Oregon. It joined the ranks of others like Tansy Ragwort.

You're in Dusseldorf, right? Does it really get that cold in the German lowlands? Here in Portland, the climate is very mild, in the sense that the temperatures rarely fall below freezing during the winter and rarely rise above 90 degrees Farenheit in the summer, and when they do, they don't last long. Last winter, we had no snow at all, which was unusual, in that we usually get a single 2" accumulation that melts off the following day (after freezing overnight and screwing up traffic royally because nobody knows how to drive in it). To give you some idea of how mild it really is, there are lots of locals that, rather than dig up their dahlia bulbs, just leave them in the ground to winter over. Of course, there is a downside to the mildness, which is endless weeks of drear ....overcast... depression-inducing half-light cloud cover, with light drizzle. And...I've heard it referred to as the "American Rhineland" and "with a climate comparable to the Burgundy region of France." If that's truly the case, my condolences, 'cause it sounds like we're in similar climate regimes.

Sounds like you could use a regime change.

Houseplants? I don't do no stinkin' houseplants.... Really. My wife and I are exceptionally skilled at killing, usually through some long torturous process, _any_ plant that comes into our home and is expected to survive in a pot indoors. Even those we were promised could survive anything. Even they didn't survive us. I've longed for a small greenhouse in the past, but given our houseplant debacles, I've given it up. I have to keep my horticultural skills (such as they are) to the outdoors.

On a separate note... My neighbor just informed me that she's done a set of digital pictures of the my front yard. She's in a horticulture program at a local community college and is required to put together a website with various garden ideas. She liked what she saw in my yard, soooo.... it looks as though I may soon be able to provide some pictures from my humble garden (and maybe even of our little bungalow). As soon as I get a URL, I'll post it up for you and the curious.

godfry

The Lone Ranger

Just to be pedantic, though they're often called "violets," the genus Erythronium is in the lily family (Liliaceae). A distinctive feature of the various members of the genus Erythronium is their growth form of having distinctly down-turned flowers, so I suppose that "shy" might be a fitting adjective. (The wild species are mostly white or yellow, not purple.)

True violets (genus Viola) have their own family (Violaceae), and are quite unrelated to the genus Erythronium.

Cheers,

Michael

Gurdur

I'll be back soon to add much more to this thread, but in the meantime, you might very well be interested in this.

godfry n. glad

Why thank you, Lone. I sit corrected. And... Thanks for the info. I did not know and now I do. So "shy" applies, but "voilet" does not. Right? Somehow, "shy as an erythronium" doesn't trip off the tongue quite the same....

Do you grow either? Or, have you botanical training?

Pedants are always better than pederasts, 'least in my view. 8^D}

godfry

The Lone Ranger

I'm just your friendly neighborhood biologist. I've a real love for wildflowers, and every Spring and Summer will find me prowling about the fields and forests, poking around for any species I haven't seen and photographed yet.

Cheers,

Michael

godfry n. glad

Well... Welcome aboard, Michael. I'm glad to have a genuine Latin-spoutin' biologist around. It keeps us honest....

So... You're one of those folks we see wandering about in open fields, looking down ever so intently? I sorta assumed the behavior was properly relegated to the "biologist" identifier, but misidentified them as being involved in a scat search. Go figure. I rushed to the zoologist characterization, rather than the botanic.
Of course, they could have been the mycologists, but that's more prevalent on the wet, west side, rather than on the dry side.

So, you have botanic training, right? Do you do your searches as a hobby, or are you one of the lucky ones that actually managed to get paid for what you enjoy doing? It sounds like an admirable hobby, if not one of the better jobs around.

You're not far away from my stompin' grounds. Eastern Washington, eh? Horse Heaven? Coulee country? Yakima Valley? Eastern flank of the Cascades? Palouse? Okanogan?

To be honest, I'm domestic floral gardener. Urban variety. I have those hybridized and tamed plants that I've grown to love and depend upon, few of which would fall into the "wildflower" category.

If I were to be honest, I'd have to start this post with, "Hi, my name is godfry, and I'm a iris addict." I should be in some 12-step program for the nearly hopeless iris buyers who, despite having exceedingly small amounts of planting space in sunny locations, will still go to the annual "iris shows" at the nearby propagators....for those unaware, the Willamette Valley, where I live, is one of the central spots for propagation of iris varieties which are then sold and shipped worldwide. Yeah, I get the catalogs (online and on paper)...but, when it comes right down to picking the exactly right color of bright yellow, checking out the "red" they're touting on a particular variety, or clarifying whether the purple is bluish, violet or reddish...you can't trust the sellers' catalogs. Going to the source, at the garden of the iris developer and grower, when the flowers are in full bloom, is, bar none, the best method of finalizing one's decisions.

(By the bye....that photo from a catalog of a variety called "Play With Fire"? It didn't look nearly as red up-close and in person; it was more of a muddy wine red...the color of a watered-down plonk or cheap port.)

To make a long story short, after a day visiting two growers, I'm now planning to uproot and give away a dozen plants and move around a good dozen and half more, just to make room for the two dozen more (that's eight or so varieties) of _new_ iris rhizomes I purchased. To the tune of nearly $200 US. <deep sigh> It keeps me busy.

And...my roses have _yet_ to bloom.

godfry

The Lone Ranger

I like to think of myself as a field biologist primarily; I could never really decide whether I liked plants or animals better, so I decided to become an ecologist and work with both. My field work is with snowshoe hares, though.

Wildflowers are more a passion of mine than a profession. I live in the Palouse now, though I like to get down into the canyons and up into the Rockies whenever the opportunity arises. I used to live in western North Carolina -- the southern Appalachians are a plant-lovers' paradise!

Though I've done some horticultural work, I really like my flowers wild and untamed. Few things beat a day spent combing the woods and fields for wildflowers. I have whole photo albums filled with the pictures I've taken of them, each carefully labelled as to species and location, of course.

[Not that there's anything wrong with cultivated flowers, of course!]

Cheers,

Michael

godfry n. glad

Lagomorphs! Aren't you in jack country, rather than snowshoe? You must spend a fair amount of time in the Great White North. Or...are there snowshoes in the continental US?

Quote:

Wildflowers are more a passion of mine than a profession. I live in the Palouse now, though I like to get down into the canyons and up into the Rockies whenever the opportunity arises. I used to live in western North Carolina -- the southern Appalachians are a plant-lovers' paradise!

Ah... Yes. I enjoyed the mid-Appalachians one late spring. Beautiful. And humid. The Palouse is quite a change from that. I have a friend on faculty at UI who absolutely _loves_ the Palouse. Me? I don't see it, as I gravitate toward tall conifer trees and lots of underbrush. It has an austere beauty, though; and hidden and spare lushness, too, down under the cottonwoods along the streambeds.

I can certainly appreciate your passion for wildflowers, though.

Quote:

Though I've done some horticultural work, I really like my flowers wild and untamed. Few things beat a day spent combing the woods and fields for wildflowers. I have whole photo albums filled with the pictures I've taken of them, each carefully labelled as to species and location, of course.

Ah, yes... The taxonomic compulsion. I know it well. It got me into the library profession. 8^)}

Quote:

[Not that there's anything wrong with cultivated flowers, of course!] Cheers, Michael

Of course not...

I'd think that anybody who _really_, _really_ enjoyed the wilderness would be encouraging of the masses who stay the hell away from the wilderness. Create urban diversions to keep urbanites urban. It seems to me that doing so would help preserve the wilderness. Whereas, when there is a mass afflicition of "outdoorsiness", what results is inappropriate human behavior in fragile environments and wanton destruction of native habitats. I like hearing that you take pictures, not trophies. I assume that you (particularly as an ecologist) walk lightly and leave few traces, too. I, and people like myself, wait to have the experiences of those like you, who go into the wild and come back, and your findings, transmitted to us.

"You like wilderness? Then stay the hell out of it!"

godfry

The Lone Ranger

Well, there are snowshoes in the continental U.S., as far south as the southern Appalachians in the East, in fact, and the mountains of Oregon in the West. But they aren't exactly common in the semiarid Palouse. My fieldwork is primarily in the Selkirk Mountains of northeastern Washington.




I loved the southern Appalachians in Spring. The variety of wildflowers (and amphibians, and reptiles, and birds, etc.) is astounding. It's rather humid for my taste in the Summer, though.




The Palouse has its charms, not least its low population density, but I'm a tree lover. I miss forests something fierce, and take every opportunity to go up into the Rockies or the Selkirks, or the Blue Mountains. The Palouse is a good place to live for a few years until I've finished my doctorate, but I wouldn't want to live here on a permanent basis.




You said it, brother! I love cities, absolutely love them! You couldn't pay me enough to live in one, mind you, but the more people who live in cities, the more wilderness there is for people like me to enjoy.




Sadly, I've seen far too many examples of just such things. If I was king of the world, I'd ban off-road vehicles. I've seen many a fragile habitat devastated by dirt bikes, four-wheel drives, etc. It's sickening.




"Take only pictures, leave only footprints" -- a motto I try to live by.

Cheers,

Michael