October 2019 Blooms

My last month's promise of posting more has not been fulfilled. I am so sorry for that. My consciousness just get more busy at the middle of the month for the Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.  The rest of the months i just do my usual garden chores, photo editing for FB and of course chatting with friends. Chatting with garden friends by creating articles have been shelved for new means of social media. But i am by habit still here for the monthly GBBD.

We are so thankful this year that no very strong typhoons are passing by our country's Area of Responsibility. Some were affected by the strong rains that come with typhoons at the Pacific, but at least they did not come directly to us, just like the previous years. So our plants and domestic crops are spared, and we have our household vegetable gardens giving us harvests. We cannot even finish the fruits of our few plants like okra, ampalaya, malunggay and sweet potato tops. My hoya plants are also not suffering setbacks due to strong winds from the strong typhoons.

Our area is not flat, so this area we put some blocks to contain the soil at the other side. I purposely did not put cement finish to that short wall because the green moss during the rainy season is a pleasant scene to see. That length is normally fully green this time of the year. I only planted a few Portulaca oleraceae for contrast.

Flowers of the orange Portulaca change hues from opening to senescense, which is only a full day.

 the reproductive parts of the cosmos flower

My red cosmos is still from a friend from the southern part of the country. I guess this color is common abroad in colder countries but not here. It could have been brought by friends from abroad, and i asked some seeds from her garden. The usual colors here in the country are the yellows and orange. But this red is truly a lovely addition to any garden, besides it is also loved by butterflies. 

the inflorescence is still lovely at the end of its blooming period

back shot of a cosmos flower

 the developing seeds are in those spindles

 We have a big plant of this Queen of the Night, Epiphyllum oxipetalum. The first big batch of flowers opened at the same time when i was not at home in August. I was so disappointed i did not see them opening simultaneously in one night. I can also just imagine the fragrance permeating the atmosphere that night, as they normally start producing scent at about 7 pm until the flowers close after midnight.  This month, as if to assuage my curiosity, a lone flower emerged. I waited till the flower fully opened just to take photos, and my waiting was rewarded.

 Queen of the Night fully open

 close-up of the reproductive parts that give its sweet scent

 Another plant that is plenty under some trees near the edge of our house is this Crossandra infundibuliformis. It also has a yellow form. They do not fully die during the dry season, because they have enlarged storage roots that keep them alive, and will emerge alive again come rainy months. That ensures its continuity nearing invasiveness. They are difficult to kill because of the dense storage roots.

 Another very prominent foliage plant in dry climates is this Sanchezia speciosa. They have tubular small flowers, but i prefer the beauty of their leaves. A dead spot in a garden can be enlivened by this plant. In mine, i planted it at the bottom of a jackfruit tree to cover the sickly trunk attacked by bark borers. That tree i used as a live trellis for the garlic vine. With this foliage the area looks lively and healthy despite the dying tree.

One of the most conspicuous flowering plant in October is this Hoya diversifolia, which i allowed to climb an almost dying lanzones tree. It has been there for 4 years and the most prolific flowering is now. I need to climb the roof of the first floor to get the pictures but i managed, i just go out of the window at the 2nd floor.  Some nodes are even bearing 2 or 3 umbels, and that is amazing for a hoya. I guess i am the only one in the country who has this kind of growth for this species. A full post will be done next time only for this hoya on the lanzones tree. 

GBBD

Nature Notes

Thru My Lens

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day July 2019

Starting when i do not have daily routines anymore, i can already do whatever i fancy doing! Many who are still in the "routine business" might envy my conditions. Yes, i actually am enjoying my days very much. It is still barely 7 months in my new life, and some  consequences  include forgetting my blog posts. My last was still in April. I hope i can regain the enthusiasm of routine blog posting.

Now i am showing you some blooms after the first heavy rains in June. Rains were actually very late by one month, and we can always blame El Nino or climate change for these changes. Nevertheless, typhoons have to come and visit us, with rains as the positive consequence. Maybe if not for the typhoons, we will be as dry as the deserts.

One of the best consequences is stopping the dormancy of hippeastrum, and the flowers emerge way ahead of their leaves. They bloom only once a year, so blooming is always very special, expected and savored. I have always loved hippeastrum and they always give me a yearly high.

  one of the siblings of my crosses, flowered after 4 yrs

  NoID given by a friend

 Hippeastrum x johnsonii

 Hippeastrum x johnsonii

Hippeastrum puniceum

Hippeastrum puniceum 'Alberti' 

 Hippeastrum 'Blossom Peacock'

 Hippeastrum 'Blossom Peacock'

 Hippeastrum 'Blossom Peacock'

another sibling of my cross with H x johnsonii

 another sibling of H x johnsonii

Next post, will be for other bulbs. 

GBBD

Nature Notes

Our Little Forest

With my diligence to take photos of the small entities living in my garden and in the wild where i go for butterfly chasing, it is a bit easier to post for Nature Notes. I have been a bit lazy posting lately since December of last year, hopefully i can again revive my enthusiasm as i settle on my new conditions and status. I have just retired from the obliged daily 8-5 office work! I feel truly relieved with that because i think of myself as an always responsible employee, meaning no matter what, no matter how tired i must go to the office at the designated hours. Only occasional sickness limits me from those obligations and requirements. Now i am not controlled much by time anymore.

However, maybe because of our body's memory and our mind's habit conditioning , i still wake up early and sleep late. I also still do not sleep during the day, and i still feel that my time is not enough. My gardening takes the first priority, and still i have many gardening tasks still undone. Once-in-a while i can go out for butterflies, but the extreme heat even in the early morning  hinders my wish to go out and look for them. Aside from my hoya and hippeastrum collections, i entered into the world of figs. And this proves to be very demanding.

So for now i will post here some of the extra pictures. But i am posting the forest this time.

I started early with this view of the sea in between the coconut trees. We are 4 km from here.

 This area is at least 15 minutes walk from our house or 1 km away. This area has deep ravines but many patches are planted with coconuts. I purposely come here only to see a special plant that blooms only during the dry season, in time for the heat.

I know the position of the tree so i know which part of the area to enter. Those flowers on top are my guide. That is what i am looking for. 

I veered away from the single path to the area, but i encountered a clearing which is steep and slippery due to the dried plants. These are cleared to give space for those legume trees  to grow, and they in turn are fed to cattle. The angle of this land can be at 50 degrees, so i had to really take care not to slip.

 One of the trees at the cleared area is this one, almost cleared of all the branches except for the top branches not to kill it totally. This practice is bad for the area, but it seems this  is not included in areas with rules for the environment. Too bad. There are said to be a batch of monkeys living in this forest, and owners of coconuts say they cannot get mature nuts during the dry season as the monkeys and crows eat the coconuts while still young.

 As i approach the tree, the beauty of the flowers become more visible. It is called the Palawan Cherry, cause lots of them are growing in Palawan. Some say it is not an endemic species, but it was brought in during the Spanish period so already here for centuries. We think it is a native species.

 Years ago i found it flowering more profusely than this year, as shown by those few flowers.

 Eventually i reached the tree, with this gnarled trunk. The broken branch can be because of the typhoons. It is a leguminous tree so a nitrogen fixer. I hope to find the pods for seeds, but i guess i am a bit early for that.

 I saw some still good pods on the ground, remnants from last years fruits. I got some seeds, but not sure if they are still viable.

Some pods have this larva on the locule where the seeds are located. They eat the seeds and eventually pupated in the locule. I just do not know what they look like as adult moths.

 This is a different tree nearby, with white bark and a lot of dried pods. So this is also a leguminous tree.

 I also noticed a lot of seedlings that turn leaves darker, or reddish purple. It is their way way of coping with the very hot direct sun. Purple young leaves have pigments that protect the leaves from intense ultraviolet rays. Eventually these leaves turn green as they mature.

 These seedlings are not like this during the other kinder months of the year. They are fully green. I always see them before because they are hosts to some butterfly larvae. I can say they are very good indicators of the intensity of the sun during our dry season.

 It is Clausena sp. a member of the citrus family, whose leaves are aromatic when crushed. 

 Leaves not fully exposed to the sun are still greener. It is still early that morning, yet the leaves are already curling as a sign of deficiency in water uptake. I hope they can still wait for at least 2 more months, till the start of the rainy season. 

It is also nice to visit some areas to observe conditions and responses of the plants to environmental conditions. Even if we only have two seasons, the responses of plants are still very distinct and visible. 

Nature Notes
Our World Tuesday

Oxygen Generator Exemption

I am doing something not according to the Title of this blog. I have been doing this for quite sometime now. Whenever i think of posting in Nature Notes by Michelle on Mondays, i can't think of other things but oxygen generators exemptions. I looked for plants, but i cannot see unusual ones in my files. So to put things easier and faster i do this. And i am forgiving myself for doing so, as i want to post these finds just to let them be together in a single post.

Whenever i go out on weekend mornings to look for butterflies, i always see a lot of other things aside from my main purpose. Plants, insects, spiders, and other things unusual to my usual sightings are photographed and remain scattered in my files. They will just find some value if i share them with you. I know some of you are arachnophobes, or afraid for spiders, please just close this. I don't want you to be scared.

This is Nephila pilipes syn. N. maculata; Giant orb weaver

 We have lots of this spider in and around our property in the province. When i do not go home on 2 consecutive weekends, even my hoya garden is inhabited by this. It is difficult to pass by its web because it is too sticky and difficult to remove your body. The threads also have bigger strands.

Look  at the smiling face of the old man on the top of its head! It even has some straggly beard strands. This is in my hoya garden.

 This is the same individual as the close-up shot of the first photo.

 And this is the lower part of its web one morning, still complete with jew.


Another individual i saw under the trees in a secondary forest. The face already looks like a scathed old man, with some lacerations as if it had been to a recent fight. It has a more pointed nose and expressions a bit scary than the previous one.

 even the design on that band at the mid thorax looks different than the first one.

 The web of the 2nd individual in the forest is more or less 2 meters on its oblong length

it is up there at the above center of its web

 You can almost see its size in comparison to that tree at the left. Its web in the forest is bigger than that in the hoya garden, maybe because there are lesser prey that happen to pass through it in the forest. They need to big a bigger net trap. This is the farthest distance i can take for the web to be still visible, a little farther and it is not anymore distinctly seen as a spider web.

That in the hoya garden has to be relocated to the nearby area. I let it attach to a long pole together with some parts of the sticky web, then let it drop on some plants in the relocation site. I don't know how long before it can finish weaving its full web again. I hope it manages that soonest, as if a big storm just hit it. At least i am not the human that kills entities like them! 

Nature Notes

Wild Finds Again

If there are longer weekends just like the last 4 day-weekend i am very glad as i can roam the wild areas longer than usual. Last time the All Souls'Day followed by All Saints' Day is adjacent to the normal weekend, so i have at least 2 mornings for my wildlife escapades.

The wildlife i am referring to here is not the usual wildlife most of you refer to. Mine are  just areas untended for cultivation, fallowed or abandoned areas, with mixed tropical weeds and grasses, sometimes a few bushes and trees and sometimes these are even under coconut trees.

 Here are a few of the unusual takes that interest my lens. For me these are already wildlife.

 A group of 1st instar butterfly larvae of most probably Catopsilla pomona. There are 2 leaflets fully occupied like this. The leaf is golden shower, Cassia fistula.

A day after most of the larvae are gone, some went to other leaflets, and the rest maybe eaten by birds.

 These are the leaves on the 3rd day, the undersides leaf skin are fully devoured by the caterpillars, producing a lacey, artsy leaves. 

 Another leaflet left by the larvae, they transfered to a different leaflet, but their numbers are lesser.

 This wooly insect might be the nymp of a planthopper, but i did not see its main body.

 Another interesting wooly mealy bug, almost a centimeter in diameter. I am not sure if it really is a meally bug, as they are normally smaller than this. 

 This looks like a landscape of lichens, algae and mosses. A coconut trunk base is fully invaded by this growths. I looked for lichen moths, but i did not see any.

I often see this red fruits in our abandoned areas, or areas under coconuts. They fruit during this season. I  haven't seen birds eating them. The plant are short at around a foot tall. There are only a few leaves coming out of the ground with one or 2 bunches of fruits in a clump of green leaves. I searched, it is Tacca palmata (Dioscoreaceae).

Nature Notes 2
Our World Tuesday