Douglas Justice's blog feature this month is Eucalyptus: March 2021 in the Garden - UBC Botanical Garden, with a lot of very good photos and description. I really appreciated having these written up as a tour - first you'll see this, then you'll come to ..., though it seemed the labels were also more visible than usual yesterday. So the first you come to is the showiest: Eucalyptus coccifera, Tasmanian snow gum. Here is E. parvula. My favourite E. rubida is losing its cute juvenile leaves, but the bark is getting more interesting, white at the tree top, but clad in thick brown peeling bark on the lower trunk. There are several E. pauciflora, which are a lot larger than when I photographed them four years ago at November in the garden - Leaves. I didn't photograph E. pauciflora subsp. debeuzevillei yesterday, but there are photos in that posting. Here are E. pauciflora subsp. niphophila. The shaggy barked E. rodwayi seems like an outlier. Back to showy - E. perriniana. There's no access to check out the spinning older leaves, and I was very disappointed in my attempt to capture juvenile leaves (third photo does show one pair fully connected, at the bottom of the featured branch), but my attempt to show the fruits in the fourth photo turned out to be a slightly better shot of the leaves. This species probably wins the prize for great bark. There's a photo from Kew Gardens in London showing stunning bark colour: Eucalyptus perriniana Bark Detail **ยบ.
We're on to others now. My favourite, maybe, of the day was a New Zealand plant on the Eucalyptus path - Sophora prostrata. This is described as having a divaricating growth habit. I was supposed to have learned that term last year when I posted a Muehlenbeckia in my neighbourhood. I'm pretty sure the term means "higgledy-piggledy branching", but I don't think I came across that description in any of the definitions. Some New Zealand government website that I will never find again mentioned that 10% of native New Zealand plants exhibit this characteristic. In December, Douglas wrote about Viburnum cinnamomifolium and V. davidii, saying "Once they are a few years old, there is no confusing the two species, due to the height disparity." I'm finding it pretty challenging figuring out what I'm looking at downtown locations, which all look pretty similar to me to this V. cinnamomifolium youngster (though I think it's not likely that they would be this). Right across the path is what I assume is V. davidii, at least it looks similar to what I posted as that species in December, though I don't see that I found a label for that plant, and I didn't find one for this one. It would be very handy to have the two near each other like this to compare them. The flower clusters on V. davidii are supposed to be less open, with shorter pedicelled flowers. I have posted Ilex latifolia before, but I never remember it and am surprised by the huge-for-Ilex leaves. I figured you'd want to see flowers. Here is Abeliophyllum distichum, common name white forsythia. Douglas Justice wrote about these in the February 2017 in the Garden - UBC Botanical Garden: I'm posting my photos, but some much more sublimely beautiful photos were posted for ID in 2012 at Bush with small pink flowers. The Rhododendron ririei look like their flowers were badly hit by the frost, but many of the buds seem fine, and one group looks very colourful.
I mentioned to Douglas Justice that I was looking to see the Sorbus megalocarpa, because I was all excited about the one in my neighbourhood that came from here (posted at Appreciation: - Sorbus megalocarpa | UBC Botanical Garden Forums); I was particularly grateful that he mentioned this one on Upper Asian Way, which I was going to claim not knowing about, but it seems that I may have posted this ten years ago or so. Maybe at the time I could get to the tree to see the label, but that's not the case now. If I hadn't been following my neighbourhood tree so closely, I would not have known what this was. There is another individual in the garden that I did not find this time, so maybe that's the one I posted before. The buds and flowers look the same as on the tree in my 'hood, but the habit looks so different. Here is Sorbus caloneura, with (leaf?) buds that I found somewhat bizarre-looking.
