Ablaze with Joy (2024)

07/03/2023

We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live with joy.

- Joseph Campbell

13/02/2023

A flower blooms for its own joy.

- Oscar Wilds

07/02/2023

A flower blooms for its own joy.

14/10/2022

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." -Eleanor Roosevelt

04/07/2022

“Inspiration is that little spark that comes at night to set our souls ablaze.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

18/06/2022

It’s time to read your own life, because your story is the one that could set us all ablaze.

— Dan B. Allender80

22/05/2022

Go forth into the busy world and love it. Interest yourself in its life; mingle kindly with its joys and sorrows." Ralph Waldo Emerson

31/12/2021

Aloe succotrina ‘Mountain Aloe’

This aloe is rather beautiful, and produces deep crimson flowers on spikes.

It comes from the mountain regions of the Western Cape, and can grow as a single plant, or in groups.

While an aloe is a succulent plant, the mountain aloe is also a shrub, which can stretch to just over 3 feet tall! It’s part of the Asphodelaceae genus, and also goes by the name fynbos aloe.

The dead leaves of the aloe stay attached to the plant, and acts as thorny protection for the rest of the plant from curious or hungry animals.

23/12/2021

Aloe succotrina

Aloe succotrina originated in Africa in the rugged mountains of Western Cape. It is a member of the Asphodelaceae family and is also known as fynbos aloe or mountain aloe.

The fynbos aloe is a succulent and classified as a shrub, reaching heights a little over 3 feet. As a native plant, it may be found growing singularly or in groupings or drifts.

Young mountain aloe does not have stems. As they become established, the plant will form branches. Dead growth stays on the stems and branches and acts as a protective shield. The fynbos aloe grows erect spikes on which striking deep red-orange flowers appear.

12/12/2021

Cattleya trianae orchid

Cattleya trianae (Lind. & Rchb. fil), also known as Flor de Mayo ("May flower") or "Christmas orchid",[1] is a plant of the family Orchidaceae. It grows as an epiphytic orchid, with succulent leaves, endemic to Colombia where it was nominated as the national flower in November 1936. That year, the National Academy of History of Argentina asked the Latin American countries to participate in an exhibition with the representative flowers of each country. The Colombian government gave the botanist Emilio Robledo the task to designate the most representative flowering plant of the country.

The choice of Cattleya trianae was made for two main reasons:

The lip is yellow, blue and red, in the same way as the Colombian flag.
The species was named after the 19th century Colombian botanist José Jerónimo Triana.
The species grows at 1500–2000 meters above sea level, in Cloud forests. It is an endangered species due to habitat destruction.[2]

The diploid chromosome number of C. trinae has been determined as 2n = 40. the haploid chromosome number has been determined as n = 20.[3]

05/12/2021

Canberra Bells

Blandfordia, commonly known as Christmas bells,[4] is a genus of four species of flowering plants native to eastern Australia. Christmas bells are tufted, perennial herbs with narrow, linear leaves and up to twenty large, drooping, cylindrical or bell-shaped flowers. Plants in the genus Blandfordia are tufted, perennial herbaceous monocots with fleshy, fibrous or tuber-like roots from a corm. The leaves are narrow linear, usually crowded in two ranks from the base of the flowering stem. Up to twenty flowers are arranged near the top of the flowering stem that has small, leaf-like bracts. The flowers are usually red with yellow lobes. The sepals and petals are fused to form a tube-shaped, cylindrical or bell-shaped flower with six lobes about one-fifth the length of the tube. There are six stamens fused to the inside wall of the flower tube and the style is linear. Flowering occurs in spring or summer and is followed by the fruit which is a capsule, tapered at both ends and containing a large number of hairy brown seed.

The genus Blandfordia was first formally described in 1804 by James Edward Smith from dried specimens sent from Sydney by the colonial surgeon, John White. Smith published the description in Exotic Botany. The name Blandfordia honours George Spencer-Churchill, 5th Duke of Marlborough, the Marquis of Blandford. The type species is Blandfordia nobilis as it was the first described by Smith.[1][6][7][8]

Blandfordia placed in the family Blandfordiaceae of the order Asparagales of the monocots.[2] It is the sole genus in the family Blandfordiaceae. Such a family has only recently been recognized by taxonomists. The APG IV system of 2016 (unchanged from the 1998, 2003 and 2009 versions) recognizes this family.[2][9] Previously various families were suggested.

29/11/2021

Gentianella bellidifolia

Gentianella bellidifolia is a species of the genus Gentianella that is native to New Zealand. G. bellidifolia is found in alpine areas of both the North and South Island. Gentianella is a plant genus in the gentian family (Gentianaceae). Plants of this genus are known commonly as dwarf gentians.[1]

As of 2000 there were about 256 species in this genus. They are herbs that occur in alpine and arctic habitat types. They are distributed in the Americas, Eurasia, northern Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

21/11/2021

Trochodendron aralioides

Trochodendron aralioides, sometimes colloquially called wheel tree, is a flowering plant and the sole living species in the genus Trochodendron, which also includes several extinct species. It was also often considered the sole species in the family Trochodendraceae, though botanists now include the distinct genus Tetracentron in the same family. T. aralioides is native to Japan, southern Korea and Taiwan. Growing in lower temperate montane mixed forests in Japan, and broad-leaved evergreen forest in the central mountain ranges and Northern parts of Taiwan.

It is an evergreen tree or large shrub growing to 20 m tall. The leaves are borne in tight spirals at the apex of the year's growth, each leaf leathery dark green, simple broad lanceolate, 6–14 cm long and 3–8 cm broad, with a crenate margin. The flowers are produced 10–20 together in a racemose cyme 5–13 cm diameter; each flower is 15–18 mm diameter, yellowish green, without petals, but with a conspicuous ring of 40–70 stamens surrounding the 4–11 carpels. The fruit is 2 cm diameter, woody, star-shaped, composed of 4–11 follicles, each follicle containing several seeds.

Trochodendron aralioides shares with Tetracentron the very unusual feature in angiosperms, of lacking vessel elements in its wood.[2] This has long been considered a very primitive character, resulting in the classification of these two genera in a basal position in the angiosperms; however, genetic research by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group has shown it to be in a less basal position (early in the eudicots), suggesting the absence of vessel elements is a secondarily evolved character, not a primitive one.[3]

From sequencing the chromosome scale (19 chromosomes and 1.614 Gb in size) genome of the species it was seen that the divergence time between T. aralioides and its common ancestor with the core eudicots was ∼124.2 Mya.

14/11/2021

Rosa laevigata

Rosa laevigata, the Cherokee rose,[1] is a white, fragrant rose native to southern China and Taiwan south to Laos and Vietnam, and invasive in the United States. It is an evergreen climbing shrub, scrambling over other shrubs and small trees to heights of up to 5–10 metres (16–33 ft). The leaves are 3–10 centimetres (1.2–3.9 in) long, with usually three leaflets, sometimes five leaflets, bright glossy green and glabrous. The flowers are 6–10 centimetres (2.4–3.9 in) diameter, fragrant, with pure white petals and yellow stamens, and are followed by bright red and bristly hips 2–4 centimetres (0.79–1.57 in) diameter. The flower stem is also very bristly.

The species was introduced to the southeastern United States in about 1780, where it soon became naturalized, and where it gained its English name. The flower is commonly associated with the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation of Native Americans in the southeastern United States. Its white petals are said to represent the tears the Cherokee women shed[2] during the period of great hardship and grief throughout US government-forced march from the Cherokees' home to U.S. forts, such as Gilmer. The flower's gold center is said to symbolize the gold taken from the Cherokee tribe.[3]

It is the state flower of Georgia.

07/11/2021

Whistling thorn (Vachellia drepanolobium)

Vachellia drepanolobium, commonly known as whistling thorn,[1] is a swollen-thorn acacia native to East Africa. The whistling thorn grows up to 6 meters tall. It produces a pair of straight spines at each node, some of which have large bulbous bases. These swollen spines are naturally hollow and occupied by any one of several symbiotic ant species. The common name of the plant is derived from the observation that when wind blows over bulbous spines in which ants have made entry/exit holes, they create a whistling noise.[3]

Whistling thorn is the dominant tree in some areas of upland East Africa, sometimes forming a nearly monoculture woodland, especially on "black cotton" soils of impeded drainage with high clay content.[4][5] It is browsed upon by giraffes and other large herbivores. It is apparently fire-adapted, coppicing readily after "top kill" by fire.[6]

Whistling thorn is used as fencing, tool handles, and other implements. The wood of the whistling thorn, although usually small in diameter, is hard and resistant to termites.[7] The branches can also be used for kindling, and its gum is sometimes collected and used as glue. The ability to coppice after cutting make it a possibly sustainable source for fuel wood and charcoal.[8] Conversely, whistling thorn also has been considered a w**d of rangelands, and a bush encroachment species.[

Ablaze with Joy