Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Lovely Flowers for a More Cheerful Wednesday

After yesterday's very serious post on the awful state of Garbage on Planet Earth, I just wanted to show off some local flowers to cheer everyone up.


What a beauty. I can't believe they call this "Railroad Vine"- what a prosaic, dull name for such a beautiful plant. I would have named it something more romantic, like, "Juliet's Vine", because I can see Romeo climbing up this one. Oh well, no one asked me, and now it's got a boring name. The Latin is prettier-- Ipomoea pes-caprae, if you can actually pronounce it! It grows in wild profusion all over our beach, and blooms at dawn, spring through fall.


And what would a flower post be without my very prolific Babytoes?? I just can't think of a more cheerful plant. She's very popular around here. The flower has a light honey scent. Just gorgeous.



6 comments:

  1. Wonder how long the rail road bloom lasts! Looks like a "here one day, gone the next" flower? Beautiful, love the colours. Do I need to say anything about the baby toes? LOL! LT

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  2. The railroad flower looks like a beach morning glory, so I'm guessing it does last only a day, but new flowers pop up every day. That's how it is with the big white ones that grow as invasive weeds here.

    This is the place to brag about how my mesemb seeds started germinating the second day after planting. I couldn't believe how fast they were. This is the third day, and I have 6 genera making plantlets. The Pleiospilos are the largest and cutest so far. I guess I'll just label them all Pleiospilos nelii ;-)

    I tried a bunch of seed mixes of different genera, as well as a few species, not knowing how much luck I'd have with them. I still don't know that, but the seeds certainly don't waste any time in germinating. Quite the contrast with orchids.

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  3. Doc Elly, you are correct! It's a morning glory and that's how it blooms. We have white ones, here, too, along the river.
    Congrats on the seed!! That is so cool! More Neliis! What soil are you using for germination?

    LT: Glad you like the babytoes, I love them, too!

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  4. I'm using a mixture of "cactus potting soil" and sand. I put all of the pots in one of the big clear plastic storage boxes that I use for baby orchids when I deflask them. I have the lid on but crack it from time to time to get some air circulation. That's how I germinated the first batch of cactus seeds, too, and it seemed to work. The cactus seedlings stayed in the box for a few weeks, but now they're out.

    How can you not love babytoes?

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  5. I love the 'Juliet's Vine', such a pretty flower and colours, ;). Morning glories are very beautiful flowers, very delicate and fragile, but pretty. The baby toes is showing off abit huh? :)

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  6. Babytoes just can't help but show off! And yes, I love morning glories, too! Makes a morning run a real aesthetic treat.

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