In-your-face Nature
Last year it was hydrangeas. This year it’s azaleas (that I briefly called “flowerballs” while their real name eluded me). Each year I pick a bloom that I see around this city to go very nutty over.
I’ve developed this inadvertant custom of taking a walkabout on 16th Avenue every two months and marvelling at how new blooms come to the forefront and burst with their colour. In fact, even my five-minute walk to work through Hospital District – admittedly a dreary area – has seen pink cherry blossoms and fragrant magnolias come and fade and give way to fuschia-red azaleas and huge holly bushes.
In my most recent walkabout, I found more specimens that aggravatingly I cannot identify: purple-leaved plants, orange flowers with petals delicate-looking like tissue paper, and “the coin plant” which has really flat round leaves rimmed with silver and with ribbings looking like cacti. Surely anyone else knows more than I do about plant species….
Check your flickr comments: the orange ones are surely poppies, the coin ones are “silver dollar plants”; They get their name because when dried, the plant’s leaves turn a translucent sliver colour. It’s a very common to see these dried as household decorations.
i agree, the orange are a type of poppy; the coin ones are also called “money plants”, and finally, the bush with the purple leaves is a type of “smoke tree”… this is a fun game, i need to practice my plant id skillz!
Thanks, Ryan, I knew I could count on you to help me out. =)
Oh, I can probably provide more pictures over the seasons!
Wynne-Neo-Naturist
Wyn, the term you want is “naturalist”. naturism is something very different. More Wreck Beach than Van Deusen Gardens.
That’s what I get for being too lazy to look up an “iffy” word. =P But who’s to say I won’t hit Wreck Beach and take something off…?
Lewd flickr-referencing comment redacted.
hi