Published by Daniel Mosquin on September 5, 2019
Lilies certainly have a high rank among the groups of plants with the most cultivated (named) selections, with over 3000 entries in the RHS Horticultural Database. If anyone has the inclination to do so, it’d make for an interesting discussion in the comments about which genera have the most cultivars, particularly by plant groups (trees, […]
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on August 20, 2019
The Flora of North America describes the distribution of brown screw-moss as spanning western North America (including Mexico), western and southern South America, Europe, western Asia, Africa, some of the Pacific Islands (Hawaii, New Zealand), Australia, and Antarctica. It is therefore one of the relatively few multicellular species that can be found on all major […]
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on August 15, 2019
Some consider this tree to be the most beautiful flowering tree in the world, as noted by Priscilla in the comments with her photo on Flickr. Meriania nobilis is a small tree (to 15m/49 ft.) native to a narrow elevational range (1900m-2900m) within the central and western Colombian mountains.
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on July 31, 2019
Sometimes the common name for a species is straightforward and descriptive. Today’s featured species is (in English) golden hair grass.
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on July 9, 2019
Degenia velebitica (no common name in English) is endemic to rocky slopes and screes of Croatia’s Velebit and Kapela mountain ranges. It is a monotypic genus (containing only the one species), therefore the genus occurs nowhere else in the world.
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on June 17, 2019
It is always intriguing to find the outlier in a plant family. As noted in the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group summary, the Aristolochiaceae, or birthwort family, “…are more or less herbaceous plants (they are quite often vines)”. The epithet arborea, though, reveals the habit of this species: a (small) tree.
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on May 27, 2019
Like the Opuntia aurea in the previous entry, Peteria thompsoniae is also a species of the American Southwest. It is commonly known as spine-noded milkvetch; the spines are readily apparent in another of Andrey’s photographs: Peteria thompsoniae.
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