“Megasporophylls!”

ESPatch Jun 6, 2013 7 comments

school-out-for-summer “School’s out for Summer!”

And what better way to celebrate than a trip to Dave & Buster’s right after school.

As we approached the front door I naturally began eyeing up the two mature sago palms…hmm, I wonder?

After writing my previous post about my own strobilus exploits my awareness has been heightened to these ancient plants. I have stopped and peered into the hearts of multiple plants on my travels the past few weeks to look at their…ahem, organs.

I had seen numerous strobili but, as yet, no females / seeds.

I could see from the cone that the left hand sago was a male but I could not see anything in the right hand plant.

I held my breath, heart racing (okay not really)…

and…

There it was, sago palm coral, a heart of seeds.

It takes a couple of months for the seeds to develop and ripen in the feathery scales of the megasporophylls and about twice as long to learn how to pronounce and spell it.

As the female cone begins to disintegrate it releases all the seeds across the ground under the mother sago.

Now I need to cut off my own strobilus and buy a trench coat and trilby for dramatic effect, (not necessarily in that order) for the subversive nocturnal act that I now feel compelled to perform in front of D&B.

“Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello, what’s going on ‘ere then?”

I think I will stand less chance of getting apprehended if I perform the pollen shaking deed during the hours of darkness. The tricky part is going to be collecting all the seeds after pollination…

…”No, no, you don’t understand officer, you see I pollinated this plant some time ago and I was just climbing back in here to collect some of the seeds, you see cycads ar…”

I started to plan a better response in my head as we entered the building.

We played our usual games, won our usual 6K tickets and exchanged them for the usual array of cheap Chinese products that usually stop working somewhere between exiting the establishment and the opening of my car door in the parking lot, but they had fun, they were on summer vacation.

Moving On:

My potential annual Darwin Award activity took place last week on the roof of my house as I cut off some post oak limbs that had been scraping and banging above our heads every time there was a breeze. I was also not delighted to find an enormous and foul smelling pile of raccoon excrement waiting for me under the eaves, directly above the blocked gutter.

Well that’s just great.

My boots had zero traction on the metal roof so to get to the offending branches required a rather painful shimmy backwards down the length of the roof. I always choose an overcast day to get up here to avoid getting branded by the corrugated metal roof.

I should have taken some pictures up there.

A tiny grasshopper watching my rooftop kerfuffle.

Lots of humidity and lots of blooms this week,

tropical looking shell flowers emerging from the husk.

Shell-flower,

Alpinia zerumbet

is commonly called shell ginger or shellflower due to it’s shell pink flowers and buds that look like sea shells.

They remind me of the Coquina Clams she obsessively collected at South Padre Island:

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2011/06/across-the-gulf/

Say ahh.

Opuntia in full swing,

and a new one for the Patch:

white shrimp plant,

Justicia betonica, J. pallidior

pink tubular blooms will eventually emerge from this spike of white calyxes.

This plant is zoned for 9, 10 & 11 so fingers crossed.

Coneflowers are popping up,

great against a dark foliage backdrop.

And the sunflowers

continue to attract a host of pollinators.

Talking of which, I have some business to attend to.

Stay Tuned for:

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“Fly Away Home”

ESPatch May 22, 2013 6 comments

I relate to the futility of this scene at the end of Saving Private Ryan every time I position myself by the side of my Bermuda-grass-infested barrel cactus with my large pliers in-hand. I have learned my lessons painfully over the years and found this to be the ‘almost’ perfect extraction tool.

I say ‘almost’ as you can never actually defeat the roots of this grass by pulling at them.

“We will fight Bermuda in the berms, we will fight it in the planting-beds, we will fight it…etc.”

Propped up against my satsuma tree, thoroughly defeated (and usually wounded myself),

I feel like repeatedly squirting a water gun filled with ‘RoundUp’ at it in a last ditch attempt at conquering my enemy, but of course that would be futile and only result in killing the cactus.

My only tactic at this point, as it has been for years, is to inhibit it spreading.

“Aye, extracting the grass from the barrel cactus killed me son…but your gloves are new William. Have the courage to use them…

wait, are you asleep?”

“That is a bit of a stretch even for me ESP?”

Don’t you have some bugs to jump on?

Dramatic Anole?

Moving swiftly along:

Here is another great full-sun, fire / ice combination, the view from my front window.

Nerium oleander ‘Hardy Red’ and ‘silver king’ artemesia.

Remember all the pick, pick, picking?

Well there has been a lot of developments on these wild sunflowers over the past week.

They have grown, a lot.

Standing proud now at about nine feet tall with small flowers they will make a complete mess when I finally extract them, but for now they are home to many creatures.

Of course there are these, (don’t think about the proboscis, don’t think about the proboscis, don’t th…),

and plenty of these.

Ladybugs, (or ladybirds in the UK), lay their eggs where there is a plentiful supply of aphids to feast on, the ants appear to like them too.

The whole ladybug development cycle was visible on these sunflowers:

Ladybug Larva

Pupa

It takes a few days to turn red.

No Bear, it has not ‘ripened’!

Finally:

Jerusalem Sage,

Phlomis fruticosa

continues to put on a fine display, as do the Jewels of Opar:

Here is a shot of the tiny flowers mentioned in my previous post.

Inland sea oats developing seed heads, and I promise the last shot of this duranta, for a while.