Armed with pink fuzz

When I started my shade garden, years ago, where a previous tenant here had told me nothing would ever grow, one of the first plants I set in was London Pride. London Pride will grow anywhere; in waste urban lots, underfoot, in shade or sun, in dry ground, acid soil, on rocks, under snow, on weed-proof landscape fabric, even on concrete. They are impervious to slugs; deer and rabbits won't eat them; they resist weeds, even our indefatigable buttercups; they stay bright green all winter, and flower prettily in spring. What more could I ask?

London Pride is a typical saxifrage: Saxifraga × urbium, a hybrid of (S. spathularis and S. umbrosa). It's a rosette of attractive, serrated, leathery leaves that sends up a leggy stalk with tiny white and pink flowers. It spreads rapidly, putting out new plants on short runners, making a dense green mat under a canopy of bright stars.

May display

Tiny (1.2 cm at their widest point), five-petalled flowers

It's possibly too easy-going for its own good; it is not a plant you find featured in your local nursery; too common, boring. Hard-working, dependable, sturdy, and boring. Until you get down to its level and really look at it.

Another name for it is "Whimsey". Whimsical colour combination here: green, white, yellow, pink, orange, brown, and "rosa Mexicana".

The flower has two stages; here, a new flower has white stamens with orange  tips. The central column, the pistil, is arranged like a pair of pliers with a deep pink pad on the business end.

Older flower; the stamens have dropped their orange tips, and the "pliers" have spread out into pale, curled lips, so it now looks like a white dolphin puckered up for a kiss.

But what have we here? Look again at the casing of the buds.

My grandson called my attention to these; he was examining a flower under his low-power microscope and discovered the fuzzy stems.

Pink hairs?

Look again!

Zooming as far in as I could coax the camera. Tiny stalks, each topped with a pink or red ball of jelly.

Laurie was intrigued, and was asking, "What are these things for?" Wrong question; variations appear without rhyme or reason, and then turn out to be useful. (Or not. Or we can't discover the function; we can't therefore assume that it has none.) So, "What does it do for the plant?" would be a valid question.

Well? What can we learn about these? The stems feel slightly fuzzy; on tender skin, like my lips, raspy and a bit sticky. The catch on my hair, and pull it. The individual stalks, for all they are so fine and transparent, are strong; when I squeeze them between my thumb and fingers, they pop right back up.

I can see them irritating the tender underbellies of snails and slugs. This may be why I sometimes find a slug on a leaf, but never on a stalk or flower.

And this: examining one single stalk, I found an aphid, and three tiny flies, all thoroughly stuck on, and all dead.

The fly is just over 1 mm. long.

The flowers attract little wasps and the occasional bee, looking for nectar and collecting pollen, but it seems that the rest of the plant is off limits. Come to think of it, I've never seen an ant on one, either.

In this context, a quote from Wikipedia, about another saxifrage, is intriguing:

Round-leaved Saxifrage (S. rotundifolia), whose sticky leaves seem to catch small invertebrates

I think a bit of experimentation is in order. Tomorrow, I'm going looking for bugs to test on London Pride stalks.

Moment in the sun

This time of the year, the sun shines on my shady garden for almost an hour in the morning, glancing briefly at my bedroom window at 7:30, then slipping between the maple and the wall to highlight first a potted hellebore, the table holding a tuberous begonia, then the wall beyond with the snail trails in green algae. It moves quickly on; to the garden proper, warming each plant in turn, waking the bees that feed on the tiny maple flowers, making the bleeding hearts glow like stained glass, highlighting a rhododendron or two. The lawn is next, the evergreens beyond, and then the light moves up and over the treetops, leaving us again in the dark.

I went out this morning to watch the show.

Light, shadows, algae and snail trails on old wall. The green and red smokestack is all that remains of a boat that sunk in the Fraser, years ago.

The snail trails, with flash to erase the shadows.

On the rim of the birdbath, a caterpillar was hurrying along. Round and round and round and round he went. Occasionally he'd look to the right, come to the edge of the water, look left, over that long drop, then return to his bright road. Round and round again.

The low light gives him a wide, hairy shadow.

I love how the sun highlights his spiky hairs,

... and intensifies the colours.

Light catching a new fern, missing the pot beneath.

Satiny rhododendron bud.

Lilies of the valley.

When the sun moves away, reflected light softens the whites, which shows up their shapes. This tuberous begonia has a hint of pink.

I don't know what these are; the name tags went missing. In the background, red rhodos in the shade, and the sunlight moving up the cedars.

Once the last light left the tips of the trees, I turned back to the birdbath. The caterpillar was still there, still following the paved road to nowhere. I flicked him off, into a bowl of moss. The last I saw him, he was exploring the container, no longer in a straight line.