2/23/08

Strybing on a Saturday

I took a class about butterfly gardening at the San Francisco Botanical Garden today. I got there a little early so I could visit the Garden. I do volunteer work here 0-3 days a week, but I don't usually have my camera with me.

I walk by this tree all the time but I can never remember its name. It's Idesia polycarpa in the Flacourtiaceae.

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We're in very early "spring". Everything is just beginning to bud or leaf out.

(Heh--I first wrote "everything is begging to bud or leaf out". No, that's what I'm doing!)

Metasequoia glyptostroboides.

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I have this little ground cover with blue flowers in my garden too, but I can never get a picture of it because it grows in such shade. Omphalodes carpodocica, in the borage family.

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Do you see how the arching cane of this Mahonia siamensis was pruned a couple years ago to retain that upright growth? Many plants grow like this and they need that cut.

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But so many gardeners are afraid to make it. Don't be like those people! Do it like they do it here! Make that cut!

The grand buckeye of the California garden, leafing out.

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I showed you the white Ribes on a recent walk. Here's the pink.

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Leucadendron in South Africa:

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The big storm we had at the beginning of January knocked over a lot of small Protaceae. I got asked to re-plant them, with stakes this time. This is my work in the next few pictures. So far, everything looks...not dead!

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When I put this one back, I decided to tip it against its previous growth habit. It was facing south, now it's facing north. I was hoping it would balance itself out. So far, it hasn't done much but it's definitely still alive which is a good place to start.

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This one looks alive too.

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Garden supplies are always limited at the Botanical Garden (it's a city park--not super-high on the budgetary priorities down at City Hall) so I clipped some bamboo to make the stakes and salvaged some rubber tire to make a guy wire.

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I tied one end of the rubber strip to the stake and jammed the other side onto the sharp stake. It's still secure a six weeks later so that's pretty good.

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I also planted this one really low because the storm winds broke the crown and there wasn't much of a root ball.

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Now I need to weed...

You can see how Protea grow in this picture if you leave them be, and why I wanted to re-direct the one above.

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Another Protea family plant from Australia, on the other side of the Garden, this is Isopogon formosus.

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Nearby, the Gunnera is leafing out.

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That's all we have time for now. I have to go to class.

1 comment:

Frances, said...

They certainly chose the perfect person to fix the damage there. Most of the plants in your area are so other worldly compared to what I know and am used to growing and seeing. The shade of green as the foot of the trees looks like spring. How refreshing.