We have opportunity from time to time to visit several Botanic Gardens, The Devonian Botanic Gardens in Devon, Alberta, connected with the University of Alberta, and Manito City Park in Spokane, Washington. Both have very nice collections of cacti and succulents and though I love the flowers and take every opportunity to photograph them, I am especially intrigued by the shapes and forms and patterns of these unusual plants. I thought, for that reason, that I would do a post featuring some of these unique forms but without trying to identify them. Those who are better acquainted with these plants than I am will probably know their names anyway, and those who don't will very likely be, as I am, more interested in just seeing them. I hope you enjoy the post and are not bored by the large number of pictures.
6 comments:
nature and your photography, never boring.
I love how you see here structures that echo in other life forms, corals urchin and sea-life. Beautiful radial symmetries
I am fascinated and captivated by all these forms and probably put way too many pictures up as result. Thanks for looking and commenting, Marti.
Hi Ron,
This is a dazzling array of succulents and cacti.
The variation is simply exhaustive.
I had to sit here bemused and catch my breath.
The prongs and tines on the cacti look lethal.
They resemble parasites in green format; some of them look like planets or cocooned aliens. The many ways these plants have developed to defend themselves from predators makes me feel better about the high level of blood thirstiness in our own species.
That first photograph is so lyrical—and the next picture of the succulent looked good enough to eat.
I like it when you have the plants all bumpy with water as if they were having a shower and getting ready for a pose.
The third picture of the curled wrinkly baby succulent looked so cute.
It looks pouty and annoyed as if was just woken up from a nap.
I don’t think you have too many photographs here.
I love succulents and each summer I try to grow them in outdoor pots in jumbled up ways. I usually end up killing them but it doesn’t dissuade me from getting more victims. They are an incredibly interesting group of plants and form so many neat geometries. I love them.
I especially like it when they form concentric arrays, groups and families of extended relatives in a pot as if they want the entire lineage to be made clear.
Cacti are fun as well but succulents are darling.
Some of the succulents look very wormy or are these the cacti?
It is never boring on your blog.
Hi Julie,
Been following all your political posts, but am so sick of politics here that it just disgusts me. They are self-serving, crooked, etc.
As to the cacti, I don't think any of them were wormy - not that I noticed, anyway. They are very well cared for in both places.
Have you ever been to the Devonian Botanic Gardens? It's a great place though they do charge an entrance fee. They have a lovely Japanese garden, beautiful perennial gardens, a butterfly house, a nice collection of cacti and succulents, etc.
We usually go when we are visiting our kids in Devon, but only in the summer and only then if the mosquitoes aren't too bad.
Thanks for the nice post and lovely compliments.
Hi Ron,
I used to go to the Devonian Botanic Gardens but I haven't gone for ages. The boys are teenagers now and do not want to go anywhere with their mother.
I have a question Ron.
I've been reading posts on this blog:
http://witsendnj.blogspot.ca/2012/11/this-impostor.html
It is about trees dying and I have read a few other articles about trees that are dying in the way described in this blog.
While you were photographing every place under the sun --have you noted the change in the tree status as this blog writer has?
I've noted that in Edmonton the aspens seem to be dying off and my own little Gingko tree in the front looked sickly this summer.
Julie
That blog was disturbing, but I have not seen anything like it here. There are periodic problems with specific trees, American Chestnuts and Chestnut Blight, American Elms and Dutch Elm Disease, Oaks and Gypsy Moth Caterpillar, Pine Beetle, etc., but most of these are in the eastern USA and involve specific species. A drought year always is hard on trees and with the messed up weather patterns perhaps all this is inevitable.
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