It's almost July, and Douglas Justice's blog for July is about ×Chitalpa tashkentensis 'Pink Dawn', see July 2016 in the Garden | UBC Botanical Garden. The chitalpa next to the Shop in the Garden is just starting to bloom, has open flowers close enough to look at. I claimed in some posting three years ago that the kind of bumble bee in the second photo is Bombus vosnesenskii. The tree near the amphitheatre had no open flowers today, but it has lots of buds, and it's easy to get a look at the bark. I haven't checked recently, but in an earlier posting on this tree, I mentioned five locations in the area where there are one or more of these trees: one tree at Nelson and Bidwell in the West End, three trees at Riverview, one tree in Thornton Park (posted for ID), one tree at 9th Ave and 20th St in New Westminster, two trees on Strand at E. Columbia in New West.
Here are a few other plants that amused me this week. I think I have posted this before, but I do not remember the name and cannot find it browsing all the early summer postings. I would like to know the name because I like it a lot. I think it was just to the right off Upper Asian Way, one of the first or second turn-offs. My memory of my location isn't any better than my memory for names. We were impressed by the size of these two plants - Lynda graciously agreed to provide the comparison height. The first is Kirengeshoma palmata, just coming into bloom. And the second I think must be skunk cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus, though it doesn't seem to be on my list in that area and I don't remember them being so huge. The Meliosma pinnata var. oldhamii at the entrance doesn't really amuse me, as it smells terrible and I try to give it a wide berth, but it looks great now. @Douglas Justice could do a July blog next year on smelly plants in the garden. Kiwi could be included.
Ah, I'm happy to see this, as the name Lysichiton is familiar to me and I was wondering why I didn't recognize the name Symplocos, which came up when I queried skunk cabbage. Thanks, Daniel. Nadia and I are both interested in the name of the plant in the first photo.
Oh, sorry. Paris, I think that one is Paris polyphylla. Just from memory, though, I didn't look it up.
Yes it is, thank you. I posted one of them for ID in 2013, then found the tag. I said it was a favourite at the time, which didn't help me any in learning the name. "Dr. Seuss in Paris", let's see if that helps (at least to get Dr. Seuss into the text, which is something I queried this time).
Three weeks later, I was afraid we'd missed these ×Chitalpa tashkentensis 'Pink Dawn' in full bloom, but not so - they're both looking good now. The one near the amphitheatre is next to a little seating area, but the flowers are all on the other side, facing south. The one next to the shop is covered in flowers.
How does it look now? Any fall colour or is it dropping its leaves still green? (I'm obviously not searching the forum correctly... when I plugged in xChitalpa, I found your 2011 entry - that's it! Now I'm finding all this other info too. Thank you!)
