Friday Fabulous Flower - pond flora

Wow the long weekend sent by very fast, so Friday comes early this week or late last week.  Who cares?  So you may never have looked closely at this particular native plant because you likely would get wet and muddy getting close.  This is not such a problem for a lily pond if the damned four-legged mammals would stay away and quit stomping plants and tipping over pots.  Even the neighbor's young lab got in on the fun.
At any rate the pickerel weed (Pontederia cordata) is still doing OK (the part that didn't get mashed and is looking good).  It is a handsome plant and worth having for some pond edge vegetation and flowers.

Tuscan Cypress

So you want some Tuscan plants, well, this tree is about as Tuscan as a tree gets.  Cupressus sempervirens, called Tuscan cypress here in Italy, but the Mediterranean cypress throughout most of its eastern Mediterranean range.  Tall, dark-green, columnar, the trees are highly distinctive and a dramatic element of the local vegetation.  While native they are widely planted for hedge rows and along drives. Everyone wanted to know what they were right away.  Some in this areas are as big as TPP has ever seen them, and they seem to be loved by chick-a-dees. Here a row of Tuscan cypress form a wall behind a terraced olive orchard (gray green trees) with lots of rock walls.