We had a lot of trouble focusing on Monday - so much to see. I can't organize the rest of this - it will be here's a plant, here's another. I was looking at all those red rhododendron bracts in the rhody posting - here are Trochodendron aralioides bracts. Is anyone tired of Melliodendron xylocarpum flower photos yet? These are from my favourite tree, the one with the pink flowers, at the top of what I think is the Meyer Glade. And they are still in bloom (obviously), whereas the one at the entrance plaza is totally finished. In the Australian section of the Alpine Garden is my favourite eucalpytus - Eucalyptus rubida. The lower leaves are round, and the higher ones increasingly narrow and pointy. Very cool red stems and veins. I first photographed it in 2015 - August 19, 2015 - Blues, have been watching that wispy thing become a real tree.
Nadia did a posting one year called something like plants we don't see on city streets. Well, there's no question why you're not going to see the mightily armed Crataegus schuettei planted as a street tree. It's in the Carolinian Forest; Plants Profile for Crataegus schuettei (Schuette's hawthorn) shows it also native to Ontario and Quebec.
Here is Castilleja levisecta, so exciting to catch in bloom, particularly after the first year I noticed it when it was already a month after it had flowered.
Those flowers were so showy, I think I have to do green. I wish you could feel how soft are the needles on this Larix kaempferi 'Blue Dwarf'. OK, back to flowers. Illicium anisatum, near the pond in the North Garden. This is Japanese star-anise, which is poisonous, not the Chinese star-anise that is used in cooking. The flowers are so pretty, like tiny star magnolias, but in the Schisandraceae family, not related to magnolias. Here are little flowers I don't usually pay attention to, different from but related to ones used in plant arrangements. This is Gypsophila cerastioides - alpine baby's breath, native to the Himalayas. These are in the Caryophyllaceae, carnation family - first surprise - and there are other surprising things about this genus at Gypsophila - Wikipedia, its saponin content making it useful for making soap and shampoo, to name one. This species is a particularly lovely one.
I forgot about the Berberis until I saw a posting by Egan Davis on Instagram. This is Berberis darwinii. The second photo is from a different individual, shows up the nifty red stems better than the photo I took from the same shrub. This is Berberis x stenophylla 'Corallina Compacta'. Very showy on a macro level is this Kalmia buxifolia that Eric La Fountaine told me about, I think last year. I wonder if it's too late now to see it with the red buds and white flowers.
Highlight of my last visiting of UBC garden are orchid Cypripedium formosanum, Formosan lady's slipper and succulent Khadia alticola
