Nadia and I took the 1pm extreme plants tour on Friday (it's done every day at 1pm). We learned some new plants, and learned more about ones we've noticed on our own. Meghan McArthur pointed out a lot of the climbers, including this Zanthoxylum oxyphyllum, which we'd never have found on our own, and it's very creepy. The leaves were way up high, mixed in with magnolia and I forget what else - we didn't actually figure out what the leaves looked like. We learned the term "scandent" (climbing). Daniel Mosquin has a much better photo of this in Botany Photo of the Day (follow his link to additional photos), and the write-up is very interesting. It sounds like Andy Hill specializes in run-ins with horrible plants, and should be complaining about his assignments or at least getting danger pay. This Rhododendron bureavii is right up my alley, with its bronze indumentum. Meghan took us to the North Garden to see the ornamental veggies. A pumpkin draped over a wall is ornamental, no? Here's Meghan with the Acanthus spinosus I learned about last week, which is not the usual garden variety (Acanthus mollis). On our own, but still into rare things, we found that we'd missed the Tapiscia sinensis flowers. We never posted the Sorbaronia alpina fruits, Nadia says because they only look good for a very short time before they dry up, and when they do look good, they're covered with fuzz and don't look so attractive anyway. They seem to be at their best right now. I We never posted Ptelea trifoliata, and it brings to nine the trees I know in Vancouver with samaras, unless I'm mis-applying the term. The cattails (bulrushes, Typha of some sort) are not on our list, but they're here and doing very well.
Actually I have some pictures of the leaves from last year but I am not sure if they are really from that tree or may be the leaves are from another plant? it is really hard to distinguish them
The x Sorbaronia is one of at least 5 known combinations of species in those 2 genera, in this case Sorbus aria x Aronia arbutifolia. I recall a x Sorbopyrus over by the old entrance near the Lohbrunner Alpine Garden. It looks like a stiffly branched, open-growing pear tree with small round pears.
