Published by Daniel Mosquin on March 30, 2015
Walking along a main pathway in UBC Botanical Garden’s David C. Lam Asian Garden, I was stopped in my tracks when I saw that the patch of bare ground that I had walked past all winter had turned into a small meadow of flowering Primula denticulata. It has been such a joy to watch different […]
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on March 27, 2015
Datura wrightii, also known as sacred datura or jimsonweed, is a representative of a group of plants that mean many things to many different people. Fans of Carlos Castaneda will know of this genus from Castaneda’s hallucinatory accounts of his journey through the teachings of shamanism. Ethnobotanists will know of the traditional uses of Datura […]
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on March 26, 2015
W. Fitch’s drawing of Amorphophallus konjac, also known as devil’s tongue and voodoo lily, clearly details some properties of this species. For example, two versions of the entire plant are drawn. In the centre, Fitch shows a compound leaf growing from an unearthed tuber. On the left, Fitch shows the plant as it might look […]
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on March 25, 2015
A newly discovered fungus species, Cortinarius ceskae is highlighted in today’s BPotD. The species is named in honour of its discoverers, local mycological experts Oluna and Adolf Ceska. Oluna and Adolf collected this species as part of a decade-old macro-fungi survey of Observatory Hill in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. So far, the species has not […]
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on March 23, 2015
This delightful little plant has been producing this dramatic colour show for me each spring for four years now. I grew it from seed received as Zaluzianskya ovata. I was expecting the typical white-flowered form that I had grown previously–a form that had never survived the winter for me. I was thrilled with the bright […]
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on March 20, 2015
Only a few days after I gave a presentation to UBC’s Friends of the Garden where I included this image and explained that sun rays through fog were rare in the Garden, the phenomenon occurred again.
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