Turning Toward the Light

Touring the Garden

A few weeks ago, I took some friends on a tour of Garden in the Woods. One of the visitors took some great pictures, and I've uploaded them into my first .Mac photo album. It was particularly interesting for me to see a garden tour from a visitor's point of view. She took some of the same views I've taken in the past, but also some pictures from a new angle.

Here are a few of her pictures:

An amazing closeup of dragonflies mating near the pond. The pond just teems with dragonflies in the summer. I love dragonflies because they eat mosquitos. The dragonfly larvae eat the mosquito larvae in the water, and the adult dragonflies eat adult mosquitos. Their front legs form a sort of basket, which the they use entrap mosquitos in mid-air. Yeah, dragonflies!

These Mountain holly berries are almost glowing with a rich velvety sheen.

Thoreau, a keen naturalist, wrote of this berry in Wild Fruits:

Wild holly, the imp-eyed, red, velvety-looking berry of the swamps, begins by the fourteenth of July. This is perhaps the most beautiful of our berries, hanging by slender threads from its light and open bushes amid its delicate leaves.

Mountain holly is not a real holly, although it is related. The current botanical name is Nemopanthus mucronatus, although it has also been called Ilex canadensis, Nemopanthus canadensis, and Vaccinium mucronatum. It is a good-sized shrub, and grows in Garden of the Woods just across from the cranberry bog. Unfortunately, the berries only last for a week or two, so I'm always happy when I have the chance to show them to visitors.

Please go to Tour of Garden in the Woods, July 2007 to see the rest of the pictures. (Login: gardenphotos/gitw)

Great new "Pollination" stamps

I went to the Post Office today and found these great new Pollination stamps.

From the press release:

Depicted on the Pollination stamps are four wildflowers and four pollinators. The common and scientific names of the featured flowers are purple nightshade, also known as chaparral nightshade (Solanum xanti); hummingbird trumpet (Epilobium canum); saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) and prairie ironweed, also known as common ironweed (Vernonia fasciculata). The common and scientific names of the featured animal pollinators are Morrison’s bumblebee (Bombus morrisoni); calliope hummingbird (Stellula calliope); lesser long-nosed bat (Leptonycteris yerbabuenae) and Southern dogface butterfly (Colias cesonia).