tango-mango:

Peas from our garden this morning

burdockandrose: Bountiful! #growinghope #localfood (at Growing Hope Center)

burdockandrose:

Bountiful! #growinghope #localfood (at Growing Hope Center)

thebowerstudio: Added some color! I’ll work on printing these cards up tomorrow.

thebowerstudio:

Added some color! I’ll work on printing these cards up tomorrow.

opasgarden: pea curls

opasgarden:

pea curls

CactGuy: And the winner is ...

botanicality:

And the winner is …

ETHEREAL by paddym01

With over 800 votes in the categories and best of show rounds, the 1st Annual Tumblr Spring Botanical Art Show was a success! Many thanks to all the artists who were willing to submit their work for a new style of virtual art…

botanicality

flora-file:

Correction: Things my dogs will eat before I harvest them 

future edibles in my garden May 23 (by flora-file)

staceythinx:

Microscopic flowers by Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) post-doctoral fellow Wim L. Noorduin.

About the project:

To create the flower structures Noorduin and his colleagues dissolve barium chloride (a salt) and sodium silicate (also known as waterglass) into a beaker of water. Carbon dioxide from air naturally dissolves in the water, setting off a reaction which precipitates barium carbonate crystals. As a byproduct, it also lowers the pH of the solution immediately surrounding the crystals, which then triggers a reaction with the dissolved waterglass. This second reaction adds a layer of silica to the growing structures, uses up the acid from the solution, and allows the formation of barium carbonate crystals to continue.

nybg: corvusdesign: Waiting for “the bloom” at Nichols Arboretum, University of Michigan Holy cows that’s a lot of peonies! And they have a countdown clock, complete with daily picture. Can’t wait to see it in full bloom. ~AR

nybg:

corvusdesign:

Waiting for “the bloom” at Nichols Arboretum, University of Michigan

Holy cows that’s a lot of peonies! And they have a countdown clock, complete with daily picture. Can’t wait to see it in full bloom. ~AR

corvusdesign

columbinellc:

White

urbangardenallotment:

General tidy today, lots of weeding, mounding, cutting grass, turning over soil etc.  Everbody’s patches are looking so nice this year, not one is being left, at the height of summer it is going to be beautiful, can’t wait!

parvifolia: things are growing taller around here

parvifolia:

things are growing taller around here

parvifolia

milos-garden: Arkansas bluestar ‘Amsonia hubrichtii’Last year this plant didn’t do much. This year at least it seems prepared to flower, perhaps it needs a bit more sun yet. I’m giving it some time to get established. From pictures I’ve seen it can be quite impressive.

milos-garden:

Arkansas bluestar ‘Amsonia hubrichtii’

Last year this plant didn’t do much. This year at least it seems prepared to flower, perhaps it needs a bit more sun yet.

I’m giving it some time to get established. From pictures I’ve seen it can be quite impressive.

catastrophe-urben: at cementerio san ramón

catastrophe-urben:

at cementerio san ramón

understorey: An Inside Look at Pitcher Plants A pitcher plant’s work seems simple: their tube-shaped leaves catch and hold rainwater, which drowns the ants, beetles, and flies that stumble in. But the rainwater inside a pitcher plant is not just a malevolent dunking pool. It also hosts a complex system of aquatic life, including wriggling mosquito, flesh fly, and midge larvae; mites; rotifers; copepods; nematodes; and multicellular algae. These tiny organisms are crucial to the pitcher plant’s ability to process food. They create what scientists call a ‘processing chain’: when a bug drowns in the pitcher’s rainwater, midge larvae swim up and shred it to smaller pieces, bacteria eat the shredded pieces, rotifers eat the bacteria, and the pitcher plant absorbs the rotifers’ waste. But that’s not the whole story. Fly larvae are also eating the rotifers, midge larvae, and each other, and everybody eats bacteria. It’s a complex food web that shifts on the order of seconds. Predicting food-web structure with metacommunity models Image: http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/press-resources-inside-look-pitcher-plants-4113 Related: Nepenthes pitfall traps are an anti-microbial environment

understorey:

An Inside Look at Pitcher Plants

A pitcher plant’s work seems simple: their tube-shaped leaves catch and hold rainwater, which drowns the ants, beetles, and flies that stumble in. But the rainwater inside a pitcher plant is not just a malevolent dunking pool. It also hosts a complex system of aquatic life, including wriggling mosquito, flesh fly, and midge larvae; mites; rotifers; copepods; nematodes; and multicellular algae. These tiny organisms are crucial to the pitcher plant’s ability to process food. They create what scientists call a ‘processing chain’: when a bug drowns in the pitcher’s rainwater, midge larvae swim up and shred it to smaller pieces, bacteria eat the shredded pieces, rotifers eat the bacteria, and the pitcher plant absorbs the rotifers’ waste. But that’s not the whole story. Fly larvae are also eating the rotifers, midge larvae, and each other, and everybody eats bacteria. It’s a complex food web that shifts on the order of seconds.

Predicting food-web structure with metacommunity models

Image: http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/press-resources-inside-look-pitcher-plants-4113

Related:

Nepenthes pitfall traps are an anti-microbial environment

understorey