Friday Fabulous Flower - Maackia

Since there won't be a new blog posted for a couple of days at least, here's a FFF a bit early.  This is the first time this tree has flowered on our campus, a bit of a new addition, and it's sort of a surprise in that TPP was told it wasn't very handsome even in flower.  This is Maackia amurensis, the Amur maackia, quite obviously a legume, and based on all description a very tough tree tolerant of dry, poor soil conditions, and is hardy to zone 3 to boot. While not spectacular like a royal Poinciana, it did catch my eye right away, and not many other trees flower this time of year.  At any rate, it's not a species you see very often outside of botanical gardens and arboreta, but it's worth thinking about if you have a tough place for a flowering tree.  It also might make a good street tree reaching 20-30 feet in height and crown width. 

Officially official retirement

TPP's academic alter ego retires - today, although there was a long, unpleasant discussion about that date with the university that eventually confirmed the faculty member could indeed retire on this date, but that's a rather long and boring story of administrative SNAFUs.  Hmm, just checked some online records and the long, boring record of administrative SNAFUs continues because a sum of money was to be deposited in my account today, and it has NOT!  Great, HR has a clear, unblemished record of getting nothing right on this one at all.  It doesn't feel any different than any other day, but that's because it's late summer and not a whole lot is going on anyways.  When classes start again is when it will really feel different, and there will probably be a twinge or two because teaching botany has been such a big part of life for so very long a time. Giving and grading exams; won't miss them for a nanosecond. Mostly the interactions with students will be missed except when those interactions were no fun at all, so mostly. Now let's be clear about this, The Phytophactor is not, repeat, not retiring. The world still needs plant pundits, and hopefully, TPP will not have to monetize this blog to keep the kitty-girls in kibble. The retiree is going to celebrate this event by swearing off margaritas for one entire month, as a change of pace, while residing in Italy.  Hello, negronis!  

Blog update

FYI.  No domestic internet access for the past 3-4 days, and no time to sit around on hold waiting for the techies, and now the Phactors will be traveling at the end of the week, so expect another blogging hiatus of a couple of days then.

Summer flowering woodland perennial - ramp

While woodlands are alive with spring flowers, there isn't much flowering going on in the forest understory during the summer.  The reason for this is simple: there isn't much light and making fruit and seeds requires energy. However in the spring before the canopy closes off the light, lots of plants must compete for the limited number of pollinators.  A few plants have a different solution. Geophytes, plants with underground perennial structures (bulbs or corms), store energy during a photosynthetic season and then use their stored energy to flower and fruit either before or after their green, leafy growth period in the spring.  You are probably used to geophytes that flower before their leaves come up, but in our woodland areas a few flower after the leaves die back, and you often miss seeing them in flower because you aren't out there looking for flowers except in the spring. TPP wasn't looking for them either, but just stumbled upon some summer flowering in the wooded nether regions of the gardens: wild leek/ramp (Allium tricoccum).  This was a surprise because this species while having resided in the wildish, wooded portions of our gardens for a few years now, has never flowered before. So it gets added to the list!  All you see is a cluster of naked scapes about 30 cm tall with a terminal umbel of white flowers typical enough of whatever family the genus is now placed in. In case you didn't know, the lily family has been chopped up quite a bit by molecular data. OK, quick check, and Allium is now in the Amaryllis family many of which bear their flowers in umbels. Didn't have time to photograph it, so this image is courtesy of Fritzflohrreynolds via the Wikimedia Creative Commons. 

Cargo bikes in service

Why it was just 3 weeks ago that TPP did a blog about cargo bikes in Germany, and now here's an article about Whole Foods in Brooklyn NY delivering groceries by cargo bike. Where do they get those bikes?   

Parking spaces - bikes vs. cars

Our local municipality did a pretty neat thing.  It constructed a big bicycle rack, one big enough for a dozen or so bikes and placed it in a parking space right in front of our favorite coffee shoppe.  How cool is that?  Does TPP have to tell you that car drivers, most of whom now lack the skill to parallel park anyways, complained.  That's right, take away one car parking space and the complaints came rolling in even though in the process a dozen or more people get to park their bikes in front of the coffee shoppe (which is also near the post office, bank, theater, etc.).  Here's the math simplified from an article found at the Treehugger.  Take away even more car parking and you've got room for trees.  Take away more car parking and you've got room for sidewalk cafes. Or should we pave paradise and put up a parking lot. Oh, so you live too far out in the burbs to make biking efficient, well then, you chose poorly didn't you? Contemplate this while you search for a car parking spot. 

Fundamentalists try to set those godless Unitarian-Universalist heathens straight

In a total and absolute reversal of the golden rule, a group of fundamentalist Christians (they come in other flavors) invaded a UU church, well known to be a “Synagogue of Satan", during a service to "witness" to that congregation of godless heathens that they were all bound for Christian hell (hell comes in other flavors too).  This is sort of sadly amusing.  Amusing because TPP can readily imagine the confusion and bewilderment such an intrusion would make upon a UU congregation.  Also amusing because TPP can also assure you that such a presentation of the gospel would make just a huge impression upon Unitarians; not!  And sad because the fundies would think just the opposite and congratulate themselves upon a job well done, even  bragging about it, without an inkling of how they had reinforced, and readily demonstrated, what about other religions had turned people to the UUs in the first place.  Well, done guys. You scored an own goal.    

That's one strange Thai temple

TPP has been to Thailand several times, and in the process traveled the country from top to bottom and side to side. Somehow TPP missed (?) this temple, Wat Rong Khun, a contemporary religious study in white with some pretty strange features. It's one of those things that you simply have to say is "interesting".  Another "interesting" modern place is the aptly named Ancient City (now called Ancient Siam) outside of Bangkok, which is a huge (couple of hundred acres) outdoor museum of scale models of historic structures originally intended to be a features on a golf course. So in

this case, the "ruins" are recreations, and actually rather impressive if only to demonstrate one man's obsession with preserving historical places in replica.  Pardon the image quality; it was a very early digital camera.

Great mid-summer flowering - bottle-brush buckeye

A native to south-eastern North America, the bottle-brush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora) is hard to beat for summer flowering.  The Phactors have several growing as part of a semi-shady border, and they are a great plant.  The specimen shown is from our university campus where several shrubs (possibly a clone) hides a dirt bank.  Even in closeup the flowering is quite lovely and attracts a big diversity of insects, including, unfortunately Japanese beetles, who last year really devastated the flowers. The big display this year has not been so affected. TPP gives this plant a big thumb's up. Although native to the SE rock-bottom zone 5 temperatures did not damage ours at all.  

Bad news

Sometimes you don't know whether to laugh or cry after reading or watching the news. There's the middle eastern living laboratory for demonstrating that tit-for-tat (or is it tit-for-TAT?) is always a loosing strategy.  You'd think they'd learn, but for some reason, probably a historical deafness, leaders of nations don't.  Our country doesn't seem to have learned anything about our "big stick" foreign policy since the Vietnam war because people keep listening to old, dead-wrong, but still alive policy makers like Darth Cheney and Krusty Kissenger.  Meanwhile Putin isn't going to worry about an airliner or two, or the world's reaction to their destruction, in his quest to rebuild the Russian empire. As a result of international condemnation, Putin's popularity at home is probably at an all time high. So once again, who nails the news situation? Tom Tomorrow!