Narcissus bulbocodium in UBC’s Alpine Garden
One of my favourite techniques for taking photographs of the low-growing plants in the E.H. Lohbrunner Alpine Garden is getting on my hands and knees and propping the camera on the ground to take a photo from a small animal’s perspective.
Male catkin of Salix acutifolia ‘Blue Streak’
Keeping with the theme of subtle flowers, here’s a photo of a catkin from a male willow in the garden. Thanks to Andy Hill, one of UBC Botanical Garden’s horticulturists, for pointing out that I needed to take a photo of these catkins.
Willows are often difficult to identify, for a number of reasons: individual plants can be either male or female, the morphological features of the plants can vary with the environment it is growing in (phenotypic variation), the genetics of the plant or the growing stage, and species readily hybridize. In the case of this plant, the label was lost and we had to reidentify the plant. If we could have been certain that this species was from British Columbia, a reidentification would have been difficult, but not impossible. The diversity of willow species in British Columbia is high – 55 to 60 species in British Columbia, or 15% of the world’s different species (source: Classification of Salix in the New World).
However, at a botanical garden, our pool of potential suspects starts at the very beginning – with all of the species in the world. We can often narrow the field considerably by cross-referencing the plant’s location in the garden against our database, but if this doesn’t work for whatever reason, we’ve a challenge on our hands. During the course of our annual inventory week, we were able to determine the name of this plant.
More interested in willow flowers than in willow taxonomy? Check out this article on the biology of willow flowers from NatureNorth in Manitoba.
You can view my black and white version of this photo on the garden’s discussion forums.
Decaisnea insignis in early spring
This is the kind of photo that keeps me taking pictures. A sharp eye will note that the image is just a touch out-of-focus. It’s acceptable for the web, but not useful for a print, as it is clearly out-of-focus at its original size (roughly 15x the area of this one). I’m going to have to try again next year.
John Davidson in Scotland
This is a digitized scan of a hand-painted lantern slide, one of 1600 slides held by UBC Botanical Garden. All of the slides were once in the possession of the man in the photograph, “Botany John” Davidson.
Close-up of Acer pictum subsp. okamotoanum flowers
Maple flowers. The buds measure just under five centimeters. One of the reasons I love macro photography is it forces me to examine plants for the beauty or subtleties that are often very easy to overlook.
Melliodendron xylocarpum blooming in UBC Botanical Garden in the spring.
Welcome to the first entry in UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research’s Botany Photo of the Day!
