Jucy Lucy

One of the best things about traveling is seeing new things.  Rather garish bright green and purple vehicles were seen here and there around New Zealand bearing the appellation "Jucy Lucy", often with some semi-rude comment and a suggestive picture or two of a modest enough pinup variety.  No idea what they were all about.  Now if you go into a bar and grill especially in Minnesota and order a juicy lucy, you will get a rather fat hamburger with a melted cheese filling oozing out of the middle.  It will indeed be juicy.  All logic and reason told TPP this was not what the green vehicles were all about. Turns out they are a camper style rental vehicle that loudly advertises their presence.  You have to sort of like their attitude.  Quite certain that even if they experience a bump in business TPP will get nothing out of it, but the amusement factor was enough.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Alpine edition

Before leaving the subalpine zone of New Zealand let's have one more nice flower.  January is the early summer here, and like all such high altitude summer plants.  They have a pretty impressive floral display for their brief season.  This particular flower is highly symmetrical and quite attractive in clumps.  Seen here growing in a gravely soil with a number of other plants ranging from some 600-1800 m, Gentianella bellidifolia. The flowers are about 1 cm in diameter when open.

Friday Fabulous Flower - pincushion plant

TPP has been on the road (left side) visiting New Zealand, doing some southern hemisphere avoidance of January weather in North America.  For that part of it the trip was highly successful.  Given that NZ plants are highly endemic, something like 80% of woody plants grow no where else, except of course for those brought to NZ by people who wanted to see a sycamore for some damned reason.  TPP shall expand a bit more on this topic and his plant bucket list as he catches you up.  In addition to being on go, a lot, dealing with iffy wifi was a nearly constant issue, and when you advertise "free wifi" you should actually make it easy to access, not nearly impossible.  
OK, well, we needs a NZ flower.  And what with all the non-natives, southern Magnolia was in bloom nearly everywhere, finding a nice native plant is not as easy as it sounds.  However TPP's travels included a trip on the tranzalpine RR over the southern alps with an overnight in Arthur's Pass.  Our B&B hostess decided that an old botanist would do better starting at the top, not the mountain top, but the top of Arthur's pass, and walking down to the so-called village, spending the rest of the time observing the biology.  TPP does not do mountain (tree, ladder, social) climbing, but the pass is subalpine and above the tree line.  Lots of nice alpine plants grow in the area, and all incorporated into a National Park.
If you have ever visited an alpine/subalpine zone, you have observed many so-called "moss" or "pincushion" plants.  These are all low-growing, small-leaved plants forming a dense mat.  As a result they all look rather similar vegetatively, but if in flower, they often give away the identity.  This is an very dense, quite firm pincushion plant with a few remaining flowers pushing to the surface.  Isn't that grand?  Fortunately the couple of remaining flowers helped with the ID, Donatia novae-zealandiae, in the Donatiaceae, its own family!  It is quite close to Sylidiaceae, another family you are probably unfamiliar with. In some places a species of sundew poked its leaves up through the crown of this very short shrub.  

Lost a Friday here somewhere - but Friday Fabulous Fern anyways

Somewhere out there in the middle of the Pacific TPP lost a Friday, and a decent night's sleep too.  A day or two later it's Monday here in Aukland New Zealand.  Lots of unfamiliar plants around here, but thought a post on an old favorite might be in order.  Here's a nice view looking down on the crown, the whorl of leaves, the fronds that constitute the crown of the fern, Cyathea dealbata.  They can grow several meters tall, this one was about 3 but TPP was on a walkway above it.  The fronds are generally a meter and a half to two meters long.

Snow & cold avoidance

Erie PA made news for the big snow storm ( 50+") they got for Christmas, but TPP is a native of the upstate NY snow belt and you simply would not believe what can happen.  A long time ago like when TPP was starting college at the SUNY college in Oswego NY, the city got a 104" snow fall in 48 hrs.  When you hear something like that is possible, you go out and buy a week's worth of supplies, and in those days that would have been beer, milk, bread, eggs, Ping-Pong balls, pinochle cards, and not necessarily in that order.  And you parked your car where it could be dug out and was safe from snow plows that don't stop for anything. 
You'd tie an old fishing rod with a flag at the top to the front bumper so people could see you at intersections.  So the news from Erie brought back some memories.  Wow, glad that was when TPP was young.
Right now here in the upper Midwest, a few inches of snow covers the ground, but the snow was followed by a high pressure front that brought along really cold temps. The night time lows are hitting a few degrees below zero, but remember on the goofy temperature scale here in the USA zero is well below freezing, out -4 F is equivalent to -20 C.  The only solution for this kind of weather is avoidance, to leave, and that's what the Phactors are doing.  (You didn't think we'd go to Florida did you?)  Just after Jan. 1st the Phactors are heading for the southern hemisphere, New Zealand to be exact.  And all the really cold weather should happen while we are inverted.  TPP wants to see some Nothofagus, the southern beech, no matter what the scientific name means, in the wild.  It's on his bucket list.

Adventures in plant ID

TPP and his academic alter ego get lots of requests for plant identifications. Sometimes you get the actual plant, sometimes you get just a picture. But thanks to Eric for calling attention to this picture from a newspaper article. The article was about the penguin, but Eric wanted to know what the unmentioned plant was. Typical example of plant blindness; a penguin, obviously, but no mention of a pretty nifty looking plant.  So TPP gets the picture and that the penguin is from New Zealand. The critical piece of information is from the picture.  The plant is obviously an umbellifer, a member of the parsley/carrot family.  So some googling on NZ and the family name got us an image that provides a tentative ID: Anisotome latifolia, Campbell Island Carrot.  It's a pretty spectacular plant, so thanks Eric for giving us a challenge.  If this ID turns out to be in error, let us know.  There might be several similar species.  Oh, yeah, don't eat this "carrot"; umbellifers are bad bets for being edible. Great plant; cute penguin.