I’m spending this week in the Pacific Northwest and the plant life looks very peculiar to a long-time Texan. Some of the odd shapes and colors remind me a bit of the illustrations in the Dr. Seuss books we used to read to our kids. What the heck, for example, is this?
It brings to mind one of my favorite images from Julian Huxley’s papers. This is Dutch botany professor Hugo de Vries of the University of Amsterdam, one of the most important figures in the modern study of genetics:
De Vries came to Texas, of course, to speak at the formal opening of the new Rice Institute. (His talk, entitled “Mutations in Heredity,” is here, in the first volume of the Rice Institute Pamphlet.) At some point in this long trip he and Huxley traveled around the state inspecting the native flora. This picture was taken in San Antonio in October, 1912, the same month as the opening. Huxley’s note on the back reveals a bit of puzzlement: they’re not sure what that thing is, but they want to call it a cylindrical arborescent opuntia. And who am I to say it’s not?
Perhaps Buckhorn Cholla or Staghorn Cholla? According to http://www.desertmuseum.org/books/nhsd_cactus2.php they are difficult to distinguish from one another. Harder in this case, owing to lack of a high-resolution color photo and to lack of apparent fruit.
Yes, the cactus (second photo) does look like a variety of cholla.
Looks like a variety of kinnikinnick to me.
Actually, it’s an andromeda. Scientific name is Pieris Japonica. If you look at the foliage, you’ll recognize the relationship to rhododendrons, and azaleas. I’ve got several in my yard, and they make a nice border shrub.
The leaves said “rhody” to me, but the bell-shaped flowers look nothing like that family, so I went with kinnikinnick. So much for guessing.
I grew up with azaleas and we have a western azalea in our back yard. That is a lovely native rhody with fragrant flowers.
Do you find kinnikinnick in Walla Walla?
I have some strange mini Azaleas. They apparently think that spring is all year. They’ve bloomed almost continuously for the last five or six years.
It was spring all year for the last few years, except when it was summer. Now it appears that it’s going to be winter all spring.
Your strange mini Azaleas are surely Encore Azaleas which bloom more than once a year.
Thank you for giving a name to them. Yes these for sue bloom more than once a year. They bloom all year except when it freezes.
Melissa: My friends in Seattle say “The plant is very common here in the drearies – Pieris japonica.”
Kathleen A. Boyd Kathleen.A.Boyd@gmail.com 713-306-4665 http://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleenaboyd/
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It really is pretty dreary, but we saw an enormous rainbow when the sun broke through this afternoon.
Those times when the sun comes out or the clouds clear are especially nice up there.
As Brian Bowers wrote in the song “The View from Home”: “But all the natives know when the mountain lifts her skirts / The view from home will flat-out melt your mind.”
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