Blackberry Lily Life Cycle

Earlier this season (August) I was happy to show you that my renewed weeding seemed to have energized the Blackberry Lily to grow and flower. I blogged about all this once before, but it was 13 years ago, so I don't feel that I'm unnecessarily duplicating. Besides, I learned something new. Two things, actually.

Their bloom seasons didn't overlap by much, but the Blackberry Lily and the 'Young Love' daylily sure looked nice together.

The Blackberry Lily isn't a lily and it isn't a blackberry. It's more related to iris. In fact, I just learned that it's been moved to the Iris genus and is now Iris domestica Formerly, it was Belamcanda punctata or chinensis. That "punctata" is a clue to its other common name, Leopard Lily, because of the spots. It seems to have had almost as many names as spots. Wikipedia lists 7 other taxonomic names for the same plant. "Chinensis" tells you that it is native to eastern Asia.

Here's a closer picture of one flower. I really like how the petals (yes, 6 petals, not 3 petals and 3 tepals or bracts- I checked) on mine seem to alternate between brighter and darker orange. I don't see this in all the pictures I find online. There is also a variety that is all yellow, but I like the spots.

I've been waiting for some of the seed pods to open to show you why it gets one of its common names. Sure does look like a nice fat blackberry! But it's not. You can also see in these two pictures how much the seed pod looks like the 3-sided iris pods if you let those go to seed.

Here's the other thing I learned this year. They aren't black when they first begin to open. The seeds start out as light orange.

I'm going to transplant one of these that moved itself more into the yard than the flower bed, and I may sprinkle some of the seeds around. If this plant is going to be happy for me, I'd like more of it instead of just a couple of loner stalks.

Another beautiful weather day! I'm pretty happy with my new computer. The processor is MUCH faster, and it's smaller which I like. I'll still be discovering things from time to time that aren't quite transferred. Today, I learned that I needed to bring over some fonts I use regularly. Probably Windows wiped out all my custom ones. But I have them all in several locations.

See Back to the Blackberry Lily for the previous similar post

Closer In

Just a few fun pictures of closeups. This is the seed head for Gaillardia, the blanketflower.

And this is Sedum elecombeanum that I like so much, but I missed all the bright yellow blooms this year. However, again, the seed heads aren't shabby if you look closely. See all the little stars and polka dots? This plant looks good all season with thick mats of yellow-green leaves that don't get sprawly.

This one isn't blooming yet. I sort of showed this before but it wasn't as good a picture. This is Sedum 'Thundercloud.' The leaves and the way they grow are so interesting!

I'll end with one of my favorite weeds. It has several huge plants in the driveway garden this year. Since there isn't much else, I'm happy to have it. This one got so big it sprawled all over. Next year, I have a ring I can put around it before it starts to grow all the stalks. But the point of this post is the closeups. Here are a few flowers on the long stalk.

There are a few milkweed leaves behind it. The field beside us is full of milkweed, so I don't feel the need to grow it in a garden. But I let a few live this year to fill in spaces.

The temperature was wonderful today, and I had good energy. I spent extra time on computer tasks, and worked outside quite a bit. I'm trimming where I can't get close enough to things with the mower. That makes everything look better. And I spent another 15 minutes on the autumn olive.

See Short Rock Garden Report

A Couple of Almost Surprises

 You know I've pretty much put the rock garden to bed. I hope to stick a few bulbs in yet. And the front flower garden got a final weeding even before the rock garden.

However, I did get the "Driveway Bed" weeded thoroughly back in June and then didn't do much else with it. But I'd like to get it weeded and some things transplanted before the snow hits. Today I got it about a third cleaned up again.

But I thought I'd show you a couple of fun finds. The first picture is actually from August. That tall sedum bloomed. One little flower. First time ever, I think. I'm pretty sure it's Hylotelephium (used to be Sedum) spectabile. I dug it up in New York years ago. Now I don't feel so bad because it's not native anyway. It had probably escaped from someone else's garden.

It got severely chewed again. One web site says the rabbits don't like it, but the deer do. So maybe that garden will have to be fenced next year too. Sheesh.

The other sort of surprise is that Cathy gave me a coneflower of some sort. I don't really care for pink ones. This is one of the yellow ones. Not sure which yet. But the seed heads should help me figure it out. They are pretty cool looking.

And even closer.

I took a short walk through the cemetery. Worked in the garden. Edited, worked on my projects. The days just fly by.

Miles walked in 2024: 481.2

See Cleaning the Driveway Flower Bed

You Say Chasmogamous and I Say Cleistogamous

 The super quality of today comes from learning something completely new. I'm pretty sure this is not a case of my simply forgetting something I learned a long time ago. I'm totally blown away.

I couldn't stop thinking about the five-part violet flower having a three-part seed pod. Things in the mustard family have four-part flowers (four petals, four sepals, four part ovary, four-sided pods). Tulips and juncus have six petals, etc, which fuse into a three-sided seed pod. But five to three just doesn't compute.

I didn't really get the answer to my question. I thought maybe the lower petal, the "lip" was two fused petals such as in snapdragons, but that doesn't seem to be the case. (I suppose there doesn't have to be an answer, it just "is"). But I found out a whole lot.

Remember those little closed pods I showed you yesterday? I brought a few inside to look at more closely. Here's one.

Well, it turns out that the violet (and some other plants) produce two kinds of flowers. This is a cleistogamus flower. Huh?

First, let's sort out those big words. We already almost know them. We know monogamous and bigamous and polyagmous. Yup... all referring to a type of marriage. Well, it seems there are two more words in this series. Chasmo- is open, and cleisto- is closed. I will try to remember this because cleisto- sounds like cloister (not etymologically related), and chasmo- sounds like chasm, an open yawning gully (these are etymologically related). So chasmogomous flowers are open to pollination from anyone! These are the big, showy purple flowers we all know and love in violets in the springtime.

Well, in a plant, promiscuity can be a good thing. It leads to genetic diversity and strengthening of the population.

Now let's take a break from the big words and look at that little "pod" again. The little green pointed things that look like leaves are the sepals. And there are five of them, as you would expect from a plant that has five petals. If you rotate this, you see there are three sepals that are larger and wrap around to the stem, while two of them are smaller and lapped to the inner layer. In this picture you can see two of the larger sepals and one small inner sepal.

Those two inner sepals do not become major divisions of the pod. Looking at the end, you can clearly see there are three sections.

But, jumping Jupiter! This is not a seed pod. It's a cleistogamous flower. That means it's closed. As in completly closed. It never opens; it self-polinates, and is not even monogamous. More like a hermaphrodite. Some plants produce cleistogamus flowers in the fall, and violets are big on the activity. The process takes fewer resources than growing petals, necter, or large quantities of pollen. They insure reproduction even if slugs or rabbits eat all the pretty flowers, or someone mows the lawn.

Furthermore, these violet seed pods dehisce, which means they open violently and fling their seeds out into the world. In fact, this was closed when I brought it in the house but it split into that pinwheel in just a few minutes.

The next stage is the pinwheel full of seeds that I showed you a couple of days ago.

Now, I'll have to watch for the chasmogamous seed pods in the spring.

I worked on necessary stuff, punctuated by weeding the rock garden all day.

See Common Blue Violet's Promise

Patterns and Math

 You know I love things with patterns. Some of them can even be described mathematically. Maybe that's one reason I like sempervivum a lot. Here are three from my rock garden that have somewhat different growth patterns.

The first one is 'Gold Rush.' It's looking pretty happy, and is keeping its yellow color. This pattern is most typical of Sempervivum. Some are even spread open a little more, although they all tend to tighten up and circle the wagons, so to speak, when left outside as the weather cools.

This is Sempervivum arachnoidea. It has the "spider webbing" which shows up clearly at this time of year. They are tightly curled almost into a ball.

But my favorite at this time of year is the Sempervivum globiferum. I had nicknamed them 'Roly Poly' for years until I found their actual name. To make babies they send out little balls which roll away and then take root. But here is a large (for this species) established rosette. Can you say Fibonacci?

This isn't a repeating pattern like the above, but it was very cool to find. Unfortunately I couldn't get a good picture without a clear background, and then the whole thing took on that color because it's nearly transparent. Actual size less than 3/4 inch across. This is a clammy ground cherry seed pod that has become skeletonized. That means all the tissue has decomposed except the veins, which are harder. Skeletonized leaves are also very cool to find. It has to be somewhat mathematical because veins, tree branches, etc. all follow fractals.

This is a water pattern from the other day. All of these are examples of wave patterns as the light is reflected off the surface of the water when waves (ripples- waves and wave interference, etc) are formed.

Finally, this is simply a pattern of completion. I figured I should show the violet seed pods before they open. There are two little pods hiding among the stems and leaves. Remember the seed pods opened into three parts? I just realized that's a little odd. Violets are dicots (two baby leaves). Most monocots (one baby leaf) have three-part pods. Not so much with dicots. I'll have to think about this some more.

Mostly, I worked on the last weeding of the rock garden for the year, and played with my database.

See Clammy Ground Cherry See Common Blue Violet Seeds